Kolkata, Nov 26: The Trinamool Congress and the CPI(M)-led Left Front on Friday announced the names of candidates for the 144 ward Kolkata Municipal Corporation elections, with an emphasis on both young faces and women candidates. Although the ruling party in West Bengal came out with a list of 144 candidates, the Left Front released the names of its 114 candidates, leaving 17 seats for the Congress and the ISF. She will later announce the candidates in the 13 wards.
After a three-hour brainstorming session at Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s residence with election strategist Prashant Kishor and TMC general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, the TMC released the full list of candidates late in the evening, dropping 39 sitting councillors. The TMC had won 126 seats in the last KMC elections of 2015, and 87 sitting councilors have been re-ticketed.
In the last KMC elections, we had won 126 seats. Out of them, 87 candidates have been re-nominated for the upcoming elections and 39 have been dropped. Of the 87, 78 candidates were fielded from their respective wards and for six others their wards would be interchanged. TMC Lok Sabha Party leader Sudip Bandyopadhyay said he said the party has focused on increasing the number of women candidates. Out of 144 candidates, 64 are women. This means the representation of women in the candidate list is around 45 per cent. We maintained representation from all sections of the society. In our list, 19 belong to the Scheduled Castes and 23 to the minority community. He said that out of 23, two are Christians.
Rajya Sabha MP Shantanu Sen, who is also a councilor on the outgoing KMC board, has not been re-nominated this time. TMC general secretary Partha Chatterjee said that six sitting MLAs, including the chairman of the KMC’s board of administrators, Firhad Hakim, have been nominated. Firhad Hakim will contest from his ward and also TMC MP Mala Roy. Three more MLAs Atin Ghosh, Debashish Kumar and Debabrata Majumdar who held important positions in the outgoing corporation have also been fielded. Two other MLAs Paresh Pal and Ratna Chatterjee will also contest the elections.
Senior state minister Chandrima Bhattacharya’s son and sister of late Trinamool Congress leader and former cabinet minister Subrata Mukherjee has also been fielded. Meanwhile, senior TMC MP Saugata Roy created a flutter by saying that the party would not accept violence and use of muscle power by its candidates during the upcoming civic polls in West Bengal. He said the TMC had to pay a “heavy price” in the 2019 Lok Sabha election for the violence that took place during the 2018 panchayat polls in the state as it sent a wrong message about the party.
The CPI(M)-led Left Front left 17 seats where it intends to support anti-BJP and anti-TMC forces such as the Congress and the ISF. Unlike the previous assembly elections, it did not forge any alliance with the Congress or the ISF.
The front, which was the first to come out with the list of candidates after the state election commission notified the schedule for the KMC polls on Thursday, fielded 56 women candidates and 58 men, of whom 17 were from the minority community. Addressing a press conference here, Left Front Kolkata convenor Kallol Majumdar said, “We have decided to leave some seats where our presence is limited, and these wards will not have the Congress, ISF or eminent persons, if any. Will support the candidates of ,
Majumdar also pointed out that 50 per cent of the candidates are below 50 years of age. He further said that the present election strategy of the front envisages that “BJP is the main enemy and TMC should also be defeated”.
Though the Congress is yet to comment on the possibility of an alliance, some party leaders have started campaigning. The BJP has not yet released its list of candidates for the municipal elections.
It is now a test for the ruling Trinamool Congress and the opposition BJP since the assembly elections held seven months ago whether they have been able to stick to their ground or expand their support base among urban voters. TMC had won all the 16 assembly constituencies of Kolkata in the last elections. Trinamool Congress returned to power for the third time in a row by winning 213 of the 294 assembly seats in the state. The BJP, despite its high-profile campaign, managed to bag only 77 seats. The elections to the KMC, along with 112 other municipalities and municipal corporations, were scheduled to be held in April-May 2020. But the elections were postponed due to the raging COVID. global pandemic.
These civic bodies are now run by a state-appointed board of administrators.
Disclaimer: This post has been self-published from the agency feed without modification and has not been reviewed by an editor
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