The Trinamool Congress went ahead with its job of decimating the elected bodies controlled by the Opposition parties in Bengal even as it "forcibly" took over the Malda district board held for more than three decades by the Congress.
More than a dozen district board members — some from the left and some from the Congress — joined the Trinamool on Monday in the presence of party all-India vice president Mukul Roy and State Minister Suvendu Adhikary even as the Opposition alleged massive horse trading.
Curiously Monday’s development came barely two days after Mamata Banerjee blamed Narendra Modi Government for “bulldozing the States by interfering in their affairs.”
Six members from the Congress and 10 from the left joined the Trinamool which had six members to take the total tally to 22 in a 38-member house. Earlier, about 19 Opposition members had joined the Trinamool in the neighbouring Murshidabad district though the Trinamool fell short by six members and failed to take over the board there.
In the past one month the Trinamool had toppled at least six municipalities in several districts of Bengal run by the Opposition parties mostly left and the Congress.
“The Trinamool is investing the money earned from chit fund, syndicates and corrupt practices in the name of development in the State to purchase opposition members” Sujan Chakrabarty left legislature Party leader said while Malda MP Mausam Benazir Noor said “Malda will remain a Congress bastion and the people will never forgive the Trinamool.”
PCC president Adhir Chowdhury earlier said the Trinamool was applying stick and carrot policy to engineer defection. “First they are manipulating the elections. Where they are not able to do so they are luring them with crores of rupees. And even if that strategy fails they are threatening the opposition elected representatives with false police cases,” he said.
However Adhikary said “the people have refused to take the unethical alliance between the Congress and the left and so they are leaving them in hordes.”