Kolkata, 07 October (H.S.): In a major political turnaround, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) took control of the English Bazar Municipality in Malda district, West Bengal, despite having only three councillors. BJP MLA and councillor Amlan Bhaduri was elected as the new civic chairman. He secured the support of the other two BJP councillors alongside 11 dissident councillors who broke away from the Trinamool Congress (TMC).

The development comes days after veteran TMC leader Krishnendu Narayan Choudhury stepped down from the chairman's post. Following his resignation, Vice Chairperson Sumala Agarwal had been overseeing the municipal affairs. The election for the new chairman was scheduled for Wednesday, but hours before the voting, 11 TMC councillors, including Agarwal, tendered their resignations from the ruling party, upending the local political equation.

On Wednesday afternoon, the group of 11 councillors arrived at the Malda district administrative building and jointly submitted their resignation letters to Sub-Divisional Officer (SDO) Sadar, Shambhunath Sarkar. Declaring themselves independent councillors, they subsequently participated in the civic body election. During the voting process, BJP councillor Sutapa Mukhopadhyay proposed Bhaduri’s name for the post, seconded by fellow BJP councillor Krishna Nath. All 11 rebel councillors voted in favour of Bhaduri, securing him the requisite majority.

In the previous election for the 29-member civic board, the Trinamool Congress had registered a landslide victory with 25 seats, while the BJP secured three and an independent candidate won one. Two years ago, TMC councillor Babla Sarkar was murdered by miscreants.

The 11 councillors who resigned from the TMC on Wednesday include Sumala Agarwal, Shubhamay Basu, Subrata Sardar, Sujit Saha, Prasenjit Ghosh, Poly Sarkar, Sumita Bandyopadhyay, Uday Choudhury, Shipra Roy, Sanjay Kumar Dey, and Puja Das. This collective defection has wrested administrative control of the civic body from the Trinamool Congress, handing the reins to the BJP.

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Hindusthan Samachar / Satya Prakash Singh