Shoranur municipality chairman M R Murali of the Janakeeya Vikasana Samithi (JVS) resigned from his post on Tuesday, paving the way for CPM to regain power. Murali submitted his resignation to municipal secretary Muralidharan Nair at 3 pm. Under the newly worked out arrangement, CPM will hold the position of chairman while JVS will hold the vice chairperson post. The chairpersons of one of the two standing committees who were nominees of the JVS, Adv P M Jaya also submitted her resignation today. The other chairperson from the JVS, Sarala did not submit her resignation, so that an administrative stalemate could be avoided.
M R Murali said that Sarala would submit her resignation only after the election to the post of vice chairperson on June 13. CPM district secretariat member M Hamza MLA had announced yesterday that the state committee of his party has decided to have an understanding with the JVS in the Shoranur and Kulapully local committees. The district committee of the CPM was scheduled to meet on June 12 here to decide the details of this understanding with the JVS and to work out the modalities for sharing of power in the Shoranur municipality. CPM will now take over the reins of the Shoranur Municipality after gap of two and a half years. Earlier, the Congress had ended the alliance with the JVS after it failed to honour the pact that both of them will share power for 2 ½ years each. The vice chairperson and the chairperson of the three standing committees nominated by the Congress had submitted their resignations. Meanwhile, the lone CPI member Abhilash who was part of the LDF said that he will abstain from voting in the election of the vice chairperson as the CPI was not consulted by the CPM while joining hands with the JVS.
However, Murali said that the JVS candidate for the vice chairperson post, Adv P M Jaya, can be successfully elected by the combined majority of CPM’s 12 members and the 8 members of the JVS.
In the 33 member Shoranur municipality, the CPM has 12 members, Congress and JVS have 8 members each, BJP has 3 and CPI and SDPI have one each. The elections to the chairperson posts of three standing committees which the Congress had resigned from in protest will be held on June 14. The new chairman of the municipality can be elected only after the notification is issued by the election commission and this is expected to take three weeks, said Murali.