Darjeeling Municipality to hold floor test on December 28

Darjeeling: An extraordinary meeting will be held at the Darjeeling Municipality on December 28 for conducting a floor test.

A writ petition filed by the Hamro Party praying for a stay of the meeting was dismissed by the Calcutta High Court on Monday.

The SDO, Darjeeling invoked Section 144 of the CRPC on December 28, from 6 am to 10 pm, around the Darjeeling Municipality premises, including Capitol Hall, for "prevention of breach of peace and tranquillity so that the meeting can be conducted peacefully and smoothly".

"The BJPM had written to the Chairman and Vice-Chairman of the Municipality serving requisition letters for a special meeting for floor test which went unheard. A writ petition had been filed at the Calcutta High Court by the Hamro Party praying for a stay of a floor test. On Monday Justice Kaushik Chanda dismissed the writ petition. The BGPM will oust the present Hamro Party Board during the floor test. We have 16 councillors with us out of the 30," stated Amar Lama, General Secretary of BGPM.

Reacting to this, Ajoy Edwards, President of Hamro Party (HP) stated that the floor test is illegal.

"We had appealed to the Holiday Bench of the Calcutta High Court which takes up emergency matters only. On Tuesday our legal team along with lawyers of the Supreme Court will sit in a meeting to discuss where to appeal further-circuit bench or the Apex Court," stated Edwards.

He further appealed that the state government should not allow corrupt builders to run the civic body.

"Just because we stopped illegal buildings a group of corrupt builders are creating a corpus of crores of rupees and along with Anit Thapa's party, they are engaging in horse trading thereby trying to destabilise the municipality," he said.

"There is public resentment as their mandate is being violated. The government should look into this seriously," he alleged.

Edwards also stated that he had proof that HP councillors were being offered upto Rs. 70 lakh and flats to switch over to BGPM.

HP in March had won 18 seats; BJPM 9 seats; TMC 2 and GJM 3 in the Darjeeling Municipality.

Later Amar Lama of the BGPM had resigned from Councillorship.

Recently 6 Councillors had defected from HP to BGPM with the HP-GJM alliance now having 15 seats and BJPM-Trinamool Congress (TMC) combine 15.