Mamata likely to meet party workers in Hooghly on Apr 20

Kolkata: With the dates for Panchayat polls due to be announced any day by the State Election Commission, Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee is scheduled to hold a meeting with her party organisation in Hooghly by the end of this month.

Party sources said she might be holding the meeting on April 20. This meeting is being viewed as “vital” since Hooghly has lately been in the news for all the wrong reasons. To begin with, the recent Ram Navami clashes in the district began on April 2 evening and continued till April 3 night, leading the Calcutta High Court to seek a report from the state government on the matter.

Further, several names of TMC members from Hooghly have already cropped up in connection with the recruitment scam, including Kuntal Ghosh and Shantanu Banerjee. Amid this, the party feels this meeting will address some gaps that need to be filled ahead of the polls.

It is further learnt that the meeting will also seek to formulate a strategy for the rural polls which will require the supremo to motivate the party workers. She will meet the booth-level workers to discuss preparations for the polls. Here too, Banerjee may caution the booth-level workers against infighting and contesting as Independent candidates in case they don’t get tickets. She has made it clear that the party will prioritise candidates with a clean image and the ones who have shown a sense of responsibility. Recently, during her interaction with booth-level workers in Midnapore, she warned of strict action if anyone decides to contest as an Independent candidate.

According to state government data, the four sub-divisions in Hooghly district — Sadar, Chandernagore, Serampore and Arambagh — have a total of 207 Gram Panchayats. TMC sources said in the initiative of ‘Anchale Ekdin’ under the ‘Didir Suraksha Kawach’ campaign, party workers have been visiting Gram Panchayats to interact with people. The party seeks to cover about 2,343 Gram Panchayats in the state and feels this will yield a dividend in the Panchayat elections, said the source.

Meanwhile, after a recent meeting convened by the party supremo at her Kalighat office, leaders like Sudip Bandyopadhyay and Chandrima Bhattacharya announced that Firhad Hakim has been given charge of overseeing Howrah and Hooghly. However, sources could not confirm whether Hakim will be present at the meeting along with Banerjee in Hooghly on April 20. Sources close to Hakim said till now, no such decision has been conveyed to the party leader who is known to be close to Banerjee.