The Hindu : Front Page : Trinamool alliance wrests Siliguri municipality

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Wednesday, Sep 16, 2009
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Trinamool alliance wrests Siliguri municipality

Special Correspondent

Since 1980s the civic body has been under the control of the Left Front

The alliance has won 29 out of 47 wards and the Left Front has got 17
The outcome reflects an erosion in the support base of Left Front

KOLKATA: The Trinamool Congress-Congress alliance has wrested control of the Siliguri Municipal Corporation, elections to which were held on Sunday.

The alliance has won 29 out of 47 wards and the Left Front has got 17. An independent emerged victorious in one ward.

The outcome not only reflects an erosion in the support base of the Left Front, which has kept under its control the Siliguri civic body since the early 1980s, but is also being viewed by the Trinamool-Congress alliance as a major milestone in its attempts to extend its sphere of influence in north Bengal.

The results also come as a warning to the Left parties that any combined challenge thrown at them by the Trinamool and the Congress would be difficult to shake off in the Kolkata Municipal Corporation elections next year and the Assembly polls due in 2011. Of the 29, the Congress has bagged 15 seats while the Trinamool got 14. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) has won in 15 wards.

The Left Front had 36 seats in the outgoing civic body.

Biman Bose, Chairman of the Left Front Committee, emphasised the need to determine the factors behind the setback suffered by the Left parties in the Siliguri civic polls. Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee told journalists in New Delhi that with the Left Front being rejected once again by the people in an election, the State government had forfeited “its moral right to stay on in power even for a single day more.”

Working president of the West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee Subrata Mukherjee said: “The alliance in north Bengal has been a better one than that in south Bengal.”

The verdict in the Siliguri civic polls is for change and if the two parties [of the alliance] fight the Assembly polls due in 2011 together they would collectively win two-third of the total seats.”

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