Congress and Left councillors boycott monthly meeting

Statesman News Service

MALDA, Nov 27: Seven rebel councillors of the Congress led English Bazaar Municipality and the Left councillors today boycotted the board of councillors’ monthly meeting today. Only six councillors including the chairman were present at first. Since 19 out of the 25 councillors did not attend the meeting till 3 p.m. today it had to be cancelled. Interestingly it may be noted that seven people, who had expressed ‘no confidence’ against the chairman a few days ago, had been asked by their leader Mr KN Choudhury, English Bazaar Congress MLA, to attend the meeting. But the councillors took the decision not to attend the meeting to teach Mr Choudhury a lesson for taking a whimsical decision. It was learnt that Ms Rubi Noor, the district Congress president held a meeting with Mr Choudhury twice to resolve the crisis in the EBM where the latter was thrashed. Even the Union minister of I & B Mr PR Das Munshi had come down heavily on Mr Choudhury on this issue following the complaint against him recently. The chairman, vice chairman and other Congress councillors lodged a complaint with the district Congress president against Mr Choudhury. Today the Left councillors took advantage of the situation to expose the ‘internal squabbling’ of the board by boycotting the meeting. The Left councillors submitted a written statement to the chairman explaining the cause of their absence where they expressed their unhappiness over the activities of the present board under the leadership of the Congress chairman Mr Narendranath Tiwari. The Opposition leader Mr DN Chaki said: “We did not attend last month's meeting because they adopted the resolution according to their will despite protests”.