Malda: Trinamool and Congress jointly win cooperative society poll in Bhutni

Malda: Burying the hatchet, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the Congress jointly managed to take control of the Agricultural Cooperative Society of Bhutni in Malda, forming the board jointly. The Left Front had also fielded their candidates but could not perform well as all the 6 seats were taken over by these two party representatives.

The party representatives, though claiming that it was not a symbol based poll, the TMC and Congress forged an alliance to take control of

the board. In a recent development, P Chidambaram had met Mamata Banerjee, Chairperson of All India Trinamool Congress (AITC). This meet to a great extent managed to bury the hatchet. A mellowed former state president of the Congress, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury also made a public statement that he had no personal enmity with Mamata Banerjee. Things have been looking up considerably between the TMC and Congress since then.

This Agricultural Cooperative Society of Uttar Chandipur under the Bhutni Police Station, founded in 1960, went to polls on Sunday almost after 30 years owing to the direction of the Kolkata High Court. As per verbal agreement between the two parties, TMC had fielded 4 and Congress 2 candidates. All managed to win in their respective seats. On the other hand, losing the support of Congress, CPI(M) under the banner of Samabay Banchao Committee fought the poll battle alone.

Sabitri Mitra, MLA Manikchak, said: “The cooperative didn’t have elections for a long time and lakhs of rupees were spent without any accountability. TMC will now work here along with the Congress members.” Congress leaders claimed that the election was fought in names of individuals and not in party symbols and there was no formal alliance.

Debjyoti Sinha, local leader of CPI(M), said: “Congress neither had a meeting with us before the election nor supported us. We have secured a good percentage of votes even fighting the poll alone.

If Congress remained with us, we could have easily formed the board.”