Siliguri: Trinamul trio cross 1000 votes

Siliguri, Aug. 2.TT: The Trinamul Congress today expressed satisfaction with the GTA poll results as three of its candidates had got over 1,000 votes without high-voltage campaigning.

Gautam Deb, the north Bengal development minister and Darjeeling district Trinamul president, said: “We intended to participate in the GTA polls which was an important democratic exercise initiated by the state government to ensure that an elected body takes charge of the hills and kicks off development work.”

He said that after chief minister Mamata Banerjee announced on July 21 that Trinamul would “withdraw” from the contest, “we refrained from political activity in the hills”. He claimed “no campaign was conducted from our side and neither was any back-up provided for any of the 17 candidates whose names remained on the ballot papers as the last date of withdrawal had passed”.

“Even then, some of our candidates managed a decent number of votes and three of them crossed 1,000. As a party, we are only one-and-half months old in the hills and the results indicate the popularity enjoyed by chief minister Mamata Banerjee,” Deb said.

Administrative sources revealed that the 17 Trinamul candidates got 7.84 per cent of the total votes, while the Morcha got 89.96 per cent.

Among the Trinamul candidates, the ones who crossed 1,000 votes were Rajesh Chhetri in the Mirik-Soureni seat, Rajen Mukhia in Sukna-Panighata and Prem Bahadur Adhikari (1,052 votes) in Gorubathan.

Deb, asked whether Trinamul would have performed better if the party had not given a walkover to the Morcha, said: “Unlike the CPM, we do not believe in aggressive politics and instead wanted the elections and formation of the GTA to be held peacefully. We have thus sacrificed our candidates for the interests of the state.”

He added that the party appreciated the effort of the candidates “for securing so many votes even after turning inactive ahead of the polls”.

Trinamul sources today said the party had decided to make Milan Dupka one of the nominated GTA members, instead of Tika Khati.

“The chief minister has insisted on including a representative from the Bhutia community which is why, we have thought of proposing the name of Milan Dukpa, instead of Tika Khati,” a party leader said.