In Siliguri Mahakuma Parishad Polls, Left Front Banks on Good Performance Ranking for Board Run by it

Siliguri:  Pratap Kujur, 48, a tea garden worker, is busy campaigning for the upcoming Siliguri Mahakuma Parishad (SMP) elections on June 26. A resident of Mohor Gulmaa tea garden in the Terai region, Kujur is a leading member of the Chia Kaman Mazdoor Union, affiliated to the Centre of Indian Trade Unions.

“We are fighting this election based on the good performance of the last parishad (which was controlled by the Left Front) and are mentioning this in every mohalla sabha (colony meeting), as also about works that need to be done in the area,” he told Newsclick. 

As heavy rain lashes the area, Kujur is wary it may play spoilsport during elections and expressed dismay that elections had been declared during monsoons in North Bengal.

A new phenomenon in this election is that all gram panchayat candidates are being made to publicly declare that they will not switch sides after the elections. This is because several gram panchayat-level boards were taken over by the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) last time after they made elected Left members switch sides by using police and local goons, allege Left Front sources.

It may be recalled that the Union Rural Development Ministry had complimented the erstwhile board (controlled by the Left) for the “marvelous work” done for the development of the SMP area.

The board was also ranked first in the country amongst all self-governments, according to World Bank, for “clarity, professionalism and development” aspects.

According to the 15th Finance Commission, the same board occupied the third place in the country for implementation of developmental projects with money sanctioned by the Finance Commission.

Interestingly, while a majority of zila parishads in West Bengal are facing corruption charges, the performance of SMP has been like an island, Tapas Sarkar, a professor and former sabhadhipati (chairman) of the Parishad, told NewsClick.

Detailing the developmental projects done by the earlier board, Sarkar said: “Our board has been able to create 74,19,764 mandays of work and is ranked third among states in the creation of mandays of work for developmental projects in the mahakuma parishad area. The board has been able to build 252 km of roads under the Pradhan Mantri Gramin Sadak Yojana. By using ‘leftover money” from earlier boards, a special fund had was created with which more than 160 km of pathways and alleys were constructed”

In addition, a number of community halls, culvert suspension bridges and a crematorium was also constructed with the parishad’s own funds, said Sarkar, adding that the board had been able to reach safe drinking water to the Kharibari block and had also taken up projects for augmentation of safe drinking water projects in the other blocks.

A total of 73,000 toilets were constructed in the area by the earlier board and the number of women self-help groups had been increased from 3,119 to 8,977. More than one lakh women are currently engaged in self-help group work in the Siliguri Mahakuma Parishad (SMP) area, he said.

The earlier Left-run board also distributed land pattas to deserving families. “In all these works, the opposition parishad members had been given their due,” he said.

In this election, the Left Front has demanded that the government should make arrangements so that in tea garden schools, education is imparted in Rajbongshi , Kamtapuri and Kuruk languages apart from the existing  Bengali, Hindi and Nepali language. 

The Left Front is also demanding that the added power to bureaucrats in the name of Duare Sarkar project should be abolished in the favour of panchayats, which are the “real duare sarkar (doorstep governance).”

Alok Chakraborty, chairman of Trinamool Congress Darjeeling unit, however, said the development projects of the state government had played a positive role in the SMP area and the performance of the board was due to state funds.

“In this election, if TMC wins, more work will be done on the developmental front,” he told Newsclick.

However, Sarkar said that the “double engine” campaign being done by TMC was not a democratic concept, citing that in neighbouring Siliguri Municipal Corporation area, “they (TMC) have failed miserably so far even after having ‘double engine’ - Siliguri Municipal Corporation and state government --being administered by the same party.