KOLKATA: After becoming the Chief Minister of West Bengal, Suvendu Adhikari on Monday for the first time visited the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) and announced that the elections in the civic body would be held by the first week of December.
With resignation of the Trinamool Congress MLA as well as the municipal councillor Firhad Hakim as KMC mayor, a long-time trusted aide of the party supremo and former CM of the state Mamata Banerjee, the Suvendu Adhikari government has recently dissolved the party-ruled Kolkata civic board and appointed IAS officer Smeeta Pandey, who is also the KMC commissioner, as its administrator to look after civic administrative function till the elections are held in December.
With announcement of holding KMC elections in its 144 municipal wards, Suvendu made it clear today the BJP government in the state wants to restore an elected civic board in the corporation.
Addressing a programme at the KMC headquarters, the CM said the Corporation is currently under an administrator following an "administrative deadlock" and that elected representatives would return through polls within the year.
Following the resignation of Hakim as Kolkata mayor, an administrative stalemate condition prevailed in the KMC particularly ahead of the onset of monsoon season in the state.
The state government had given a window period of three days so that the Trinamool Congress can select the new mayor. Since it could not happen, the KMC board was dissolved and Pandey was appointed as its administrator.
He said, “By December, through elections, the civic body will be handed over to elected representatives.”
“KMC services are like emergency services. Civic polls will be held by the first week of December. We wanted the existing party (TMC), which has the majority, to form the new board after the mayor resigned. But if their party can’t decide on who will be the mayor, what can the state government do?” he said while speaking to reporters at the KMC headquarters on S N Banerjee Road at Esplanade.
He visited the KMC headquarters to launch of "Swachhatake Swagat," a city-wide cleanliness drive undertaken ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's proposed visit to Kolkata later this month for an International Yoga Day event on Red Road.
Significantly, there was a rush of Trinamool Congress councillors, including the former mayor Hakim, Mala Roy, a party MP from Kolkata South seat, who is also one of the signatories of the letter written by 20 rebel MPs of the party in the Lok Sabha to the Speaker Om Birla showing their support to the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre, Kajori Banerjee, wife of Mamata Banerjee’s brother, Debashis Kumar and many others in the launching programme “Swachhatake Swagat” at the KMC.
Trinamool has 137 councillors in the Kolkata civic body. "This is not about this side or that side. It is only about development… Politics can be done during elections, and during the remaining five years, all of us will work together for development," he said. The KMC had remained under uninterrupted TMC control since 2010, a year before Mamata Banerjee ended the Left Front's 34-year rule in the state.