A meeting of Trinamool councillors of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation with party supremo Mamata Banerjee, scheduled for Sunday afternoon, was called off just hours before it was due to begin.
According to several councillors, the meeting was cancelled as many of their colleagues feared attending it could expose them to the risk of arrest.
The councillors said resentment had been growing within the party ranks over what they perceived as the leadership’s failure to stand by some of their colleagues who had been arrested in recent days.
Among the reasons cited by some councillors for skipping the meeting was that Sunday was a holiday and therefore not an appropriate day for such a gathering, a source said.
“The meeting was called off because very few councillors were willing to attend it. Most councillors did not want to go. They apprehend that if they show up in the meeting, the ruling party will go against them. Those who did not want to attend cited one reason after another to argue why they would not be able to come to the meeting,” said one councillor.
“A state-sponsored assault on our party is underway. Some of our fellow councillors from the Kolkata Municipal Corporation and other civic bodies have been arrested, but the party has not stood by them. It could have extended legal assistance and supported them in court. It remained silent, leaving the arrested councillors to fend for themselves,” another Trinamool councillor of the KMC said.
Till Sunday evening, seven KMC councillors had been arrested since the Assembly election results were announced on May 4.
Many councillors were informed about Sunday’s meeting by KMC chairperson Mala Roy. The meeting was scheduled to be held at Trinamool Bhavan, the party’s headquarters at Metropolitan, off EM Bypass. Party chief and former chief minister Mamata Banerjee was slated to address the councillors.
However, Mamata left for Delhi on Sunday afternoon to attend a key meeting of the Opposition INDIA alliance.
Trinamool councillors in the KMC said Sunday’s meeting had been convened to gauge whether the party had enough support among councillors to project a new face as mayor following Firhad Hakim’s resignation on Friday.
According to them, a strong turnout at the meeting would have reassured the party leadership that councillors were willing to back a new mayor who could remain in office until the KMC elections, due in December.
The reluctance of many councillors to attend, however, appears to have conveyed the message that any attempt to install a new mayor may not find adequate support.
KMC’s board is likely to be dissolved by Monday or Tuesday, sources in the state government said.
The municipal affairs department on Friday issued a notice to KMC commissioner Smita Pandey, asking her to explain why the corporation should not be dissolved. The notice, served within hours of Hakim’s resignation, gave Pandey three days to submit her response.
The notice says that the KMC has “become practically incompetent and has failed to discharge its statutory obligations to render municipal services, which is detrimental to public interest”. It asks “why the corporation shall not be dissolved” on this ground.
Sources in the state government said an administrator is likely to be appointed by early next week.
The only other option to stymie the appointment of an administrator was the installation of a new Trinamool mayor, a possibility that appears to have faded after the councillors’ meeting scheduled for Sunday afternoon was called off, according to conversations with officials.
The Trinamool won the 2021 KMC election with an overwhelming majority, securing 138 of 144 seats; two councillors have since died.
However, amid reports of internal strain and recent electoral setbacks, there is uncertainty over how many councillors would back the election of a new mayor.
Several councillors who were earlier active on social media and visible in their wards have gone missing from public view after the party’s poor showing in the Assembly elections.
