Poll Jolt for Trinamul

Statesman News Service

MALDA,(India) March. 16. — The state Trinamul Congress leadership received a jolt today when the party’s candidate for English Bazaar, Mr KN Chowdhury, announced that he would not contest on behalf of the Trinamul Congress.

“Until the non-bailable arrest warrant issued against me by a Bihar court is cleared, how could I tell you whether I would contest or not,” Mr Chowdhury said. On the other hand, he also made it clear that he would not go against the Malda Congress leadership. “We all want to defeat the CPI-M in English Bazaar like what I did in the last Assembly election, he said. Criticising the state Trinamul leadership, Mr KN Chowdhury said: “Without consulting me, they have nominated three candidates for Malda district, including me. The other two leaders have links with the CPI-M. How could they get a Trinamul ticket. Moreover, the party leadership did nothing to clear the non-bailable arrest warrant issued against me by a Bihar court. If the EC deletes my name from the voter list, how could I contest?” Mr Chowdhury said. It may be noted that acting on EC’s directive, the district magistrate had recently issued a letter to the concerned authorities, instructing them to delete Mr Chowdhury’s name from the electoral rolls. The order, however, is yet to be executed for unknown reasons. Speculations are rife that Mr Chowdhury could get a Congress ticket from English Bazaar, as proposed by the senior Congress leader, Mr ABA Ghani Khan Choudhury. Mr Chowdhury’s name, however, was not included in the proposed list submitted by the district president of Malda Congress, Mrs Rubi Noor, to the Pradesh Congress Committee. “Mr Chowdhury is definitely an experienced leader and capable of posing a challenge to the CPI-M, but how could we take the risk of offering him a Congress ticket since a non-bailable arrest warrant had been issued against him,” said a senior Congress leader in Malda after reportedly receiving some information from Kolkata, where the Congress’s election committee has been busy in finalising candidates for the upcoming Assembly polls. #