The ruling Trinamul Congress on Saturday boycotted the all-party meeting convened by state election commission to discuss the key issues of the rescheduled panchayat polls. The meeting was scheduled to start at 11.30 am. However, the commission waited for nearly over 20 minutes for the representatives of Trinamul Congress before starting the meeting.
The ruling party faced a lot of flak from all quarters for their behaviour. However, defiant chief minister Mamata Banerjee defended her party’s decision.
Industry minister Partha Chatterjee claimed that his party had informed the SEC before hand that it would not be attending the meeting. “Yesterday, we sent a fax to state election commissioner Mira Pande, informing her that we would not attend the all-party meeting. The Election Commission has been taking unilateral decisions on the polls ignoring the state government’s views. It had unilaterally announced the date of the poll results. The commission’s attitude is discourteous,” Mr Chatterjee said.
If seemed strange that although Trinamul had informed the SEC a day in advance, but the commission still waited for their representatives. Rejecting Mr Chatterjee’s claim, state election commission secretary Tapas Ray said that the commission had not received any communication from the state government till the meeting commenced. “We received a letter from Mr Chatterjee written on party’s letterhead after the meeting was over. There he mentioned that the Trinamul Congress was not able to send any representative to the meeting at such a short notice,” he said.
Opposition Congress and CPI(M), which attended the meeting, expressed concerns over the ruling party’s absence in the meeting. “This is unprecedented. I have never seen in the 40 years of my political career a ruling party being absent in an all-party meet. This is display of disrespect to a constitutional body,” senior Congress leader Manas Bhuniya said. Echoing his sentiment, CPI(M) leader Rabin Deb said, “Trinamul Congress’s absence only shows its disregard for the constitutional and democratic norms.”
Meanwhile, chief secretary Sanjay Mitra, home secretary Basudeb Banerjee, DG Naparajit Mukherjee and ADG (law and order) Banibrata Basu had a meeting with the election commission officials over the deployment of forces in the polling booths.