Malda, Sept. 10: The Left Front has launched a door-to-door campaign to mobilise opinion, which it can use in its tirade against the alleged mal-administration of the Trinamul Congress-BJP-run Englishbazar Municipality.

The front partners, led by the CPM, have set out to know how the residents rate the present board?s performance.

A questionnaire comprising 21 points, with boxes to mark ?yes? or ?no?, is being distributed to each house in the 25 wards that make up the municipality area. The questionnaire also gives residents the option of either signing the filled-up form or refraining from doing so.

Dolon Chaki, a CPM councillor, said the poll results would be collated by Sunday. The Left Front has plans of flagging off the first of a series of rallies against the municipality on the same day.

On September 20, the front will submit a complaint to the district magistrate highlighting the alleged corruption in the civic body.

?The Trinamul and BJP have rendered the board of councillors redundant and, taking advantage of this, is indulging in corruption,? alleged Sanjib Roy of the CPM, the Opposition leader in the municipality.

Roy said the municipality had taken up a project to build a two-storey market complex at a cost of Rs 24 lakh without floating tenders or consulting the board of councillors.

?The chairman has to get the board?s clearance for any project above Rs 50,000,? he said.

?The municipality is turning the entire area into a tinder box by giving permission for shops and high-rises to come up wherever promoters want them to. There is no planning at all,? he alleged.

Indrajit Mitra, the secretary of the CPM?s local committee in Englishbazar, echoed the leader.

?The municipality is creating pressure on the townsfolk by levying a huge number of taxes. The people will reply to this in the opinion poll. There is no question of pressuring the people while conducting the survey. The questions will be distributed tomorrow and collected the next day.?

Mitra alleged that the present board had sold some land, donated by the erstwhile maharaja of Chachol, for the construction of a water filtration plant.

Asked about it, municipal vice-chairman Gobinda Mondol of the BJP said the CPM was trying to gain political mileage by trying to raise controversial issues.

?The government has been urging us to raise the civic body?s asset-base. That is why we have taken up projects like constructing market complexes. As for raising the taxes, the municipality has to perform and to do that we need funds. The government has virtually stopped sending funds of any substance,? Mondol said.

?Corruption was at a peak when the Left Front ran the municipality,? he alleged.