Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) has to convene a monthly meeting of councillors by May 30 to comply with existing rules governing the conduct of such meetings, sources in the civic body said.
The last monthly meeting was held on April 30, a day after Calcutta voted in the Assembly elections.
The KMC (Procedure and Conduct of Business) Rules, 1984, mandate that at least one session be held every month, KMC chairperson Mala Roy told Metro.
On Friday, the monthly meeting could not be held as KMC officials did not unlock the council chamber, the hall where the meeting is held every month, despite the chairperson directing the secretary to open it.
The meeting had been called off on Thursday, but Trinamool asked its councillors to present themselves on Friday. The party took the measure after it alleged that the KMC secretary called off the monthly meeting, deviating from rules and established practices.
After the councillors — around 90 councillors from Trinamool had assembled at the KMC on Friday — could not enter the council chamber, they held a session at the adjacent councillors’ club room.
Roy, mayor Firhad Hakim, deputy mayor Atin Ghosh and other councillors spoke at the meeting. All of them harped on how the KMC’s executive authorities were acting at the behest of the government.
The KMC chairperson convenes the monthly meeting of councillors, while the secretary of the civic body officially issues a notice based on instructions from the chairperson.
A meeting can be called off only if the chairperson instructs the secretary to cancel or defer it, which, sources said, was not the case with Friday’s meeting. They alleged that the secretary was compelled to cancel the session following instructions from senior state government officials.
“The rules clearly state that at least one session has to be held every month. Even during the Covid pandemic, this rule was not violated,” Roy told this newspaper on Saturday.
Roy said the session held in the club room should be treated as a valid meeting. “We did not receive any support from the KMC secretary. We will prepare the minutes of the meeting and send them to the secretary so they can be kept on record,” she said.
Sources said the session organised by Trinamool councillors on Friday was unlikely to receive official sanction.
KMC commissioner Smita Pandey, whom Trinamool councillors have accused of acting in a partisan manner, told Metro that she had spoken to the mayor on Thursday.
Pandey said she had informed the mayor that the KMC House would have to be deferred. Trinamool councillors had accused her of bypassing the mayor and the mayoral council, even though the tenure of the Trinamool-run board has not yet ended.
“I had informed the mayor (about the meeting being called off on Friday). He told me there had to be at least one meeting every month and that there was still time to organise it,” Pandey said.
A senior official said even if the meeting is not held within a month, there is no threat of the board being dissolved.