Alipurduar :

The first zilla parishad of the newly-created Alipurduar district was formed today with Mohon Sharma of the Trinamul Congress being elected as the sabhadhipati and Atul Subba as sahakari sabhadhipati.

In the 18-member zilla parishad, Sharma won 10 votes against the Left Front’s Satish Roy. An RSP member was absent from the election and Roy got seven votes.

Trinamul had just one member when Alipurduar zilla parishad was separated from Jalpaiguri zilla parishad. While the Left Front had 13 seats (10 for the CPM and three for the RSP), the Congress had three members each. The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha had a lone member in the rural body.

However, all the three Congress members, including Sharma and Subba, defected to Trinamul in July. Four members of the CPM and one from the RSP also joined Trinamul in August, taking the latter’s tally to nine in the zilla parishad.

Today, the lone Morcha member extended support to Trinamul, paving the way for Sharma’s election.

Sources said Trinamul couldn’t reach on a consensus on the choice of the sabhadhipati as most of those who had defected had been offered the post.

“Trinamul leader Mukul Roy was forced to come to Alipurduar yesterday to iron out differences. Roy talked to the party’s zilla parishad members till midnight yesterday and couldn’t finalise a name for the top post in the zilla parishad. This morning, he again spoke to zilla parishad members at a hotel here and Mohon Sharma was chosen for the sabhadhipati’s post. It was also decided that Subba would be the sahakari sabhadhipati,” said a source.

After the voting, Shukla Brahmma Ghosh, a CPM member in the zilla parishad, alleged that Trinamul could prove the majority because of horse-trading.

“We have lost because Trinamul purchased some Left and Congress members like cows and goats. Many of us could withstand Trinamul pressure and continue to be in the parent parties. We will remain in the Left Front till death and nobody will be able to change our stand because we are not cows or goats. An RSP member couldn’t come to oath-taking and voting today because she was threatened by Trinamul supporters,” said Ghosh.

Mukul Roy denied the charge that Trinamul had paid money to the Left Front and Congress members for their defection.

“They joined Trinamul after seeing the development works launched by the Mamata Banerjee government,” he said.

source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph, Calcutta / Front Page> North Bengal & Sikkim / by The Telegraph Correspondent / Tuesday – October 28th, 2014