People's Democracy

WEST BENGAL

LF Sweeps Haldia Municipal Polls

Kolkata Corporation Seat Retained

B Prasant

LEFT FRONT candidates recorded big wins in all 22 wards of Haldia municipality where elections were held on July 22. The Left Front has also retained ward 36 of the Kolkata municipal corporation (KMC) where a byelection was held on the same day. The Left Front emerged victorious also in the bypoll held for ward 11 of the Asansol municipality. The voting was free, fair and peaceful.

Speaking to the media at Muzaffar Ahmad Bhavan in Kolkata, CPI(M) state secretary Anil Biswas said the widening popular base of the Left Front was well reflected in these municipal elections.

The Left Front won each of the 22 wards of Haldia municipality by impressive margins. The front had earlier won uncontested three seats here. 

In all these 22 wards, Left Front candidates posted victories by gathering a big percentage of the valid votes --- between 70 and 80 per cent on an average. Fourteen of the 19 Congress candidates in the fray forfeited their deposits. Two of the 9 Trinamul Congress candidates faced the same fate while 7 escaped it by a whisker. The BJP saw 5 out of its 6 candidates losing their deposits.

The Haldia results, the Left Front leadership believes, is a clear vindication of the decision by the Left Front government to take up and continue with an ever larger number of developmental programmes in Haldia, including the prestigious Haldia Petrochemical Corporation.

The bypoll for ward 36 of the KMC was necessitated by the demise of the sitting Left Front member. Comprising the Rajabazar-Beliaghata area, the ward is inhabited by a number of communities and is a hub of small business activities. The area also comprises a number of bastis.

The Left Front’s CPI candidate, Mousumi Ghosh, daughter of the deceased councillor and CPI leader Chanchal Ghosh, defeated her nearest Congress rival by a margin of 4483 votes, with the Trinamul Congress ending up a distant third. Both the Congress and Trinamul Congress candidates forfeited their deposits. The voting chart given below is self-explanatory:

The story was repeated for ward 11 of the Asansol municipality where, too, the bypoll was held in the wake of the demise of the sitting councillor.  Pervez Khan of the CPI(M) won nearly 70 per cent of the votes polled.