Congress loses all municipalities to TMC in Adhir Chowdhury's bastion Murshidabad

Congress on Saturday lost control over Kandi municipality in Murshidabad, the last of the seven in the district, to ruling Trinamool Congress in West Bengal.

TMC now controls all the seven municipalities in the district, which along with Malda district are considered the strongholds of Congress and the former the backyard of WBPCC president Adhir Chowdhury. Five Congress councillors of Kandi municipality switched over to TMC during the day. As a result the strength of TMC, which had 9 councillors since February this year after 6 Congress councillors defected to it, went up to 14 giving it the effective control over the 18-member civic body.

Congress is now left with 2 councillors and the rest two belong to Left-supported independents. The independents had supported the Congress. "The Congress decision to align with CPI-M during the last assembly poll has proved to be a political harakiri as the rank and file of the party did not accept the alliance. "By the end of this year there will be no sign of political presence of Congress and CPI(M) in Bengal as people have rejected this unholy alliance," claimed senior TMC leader and MP Abhishek Banerjee.

"In future you will have only few leaders left in Congress but there will be no workers or activists in it ... Those who are joining TMC want to be part of the developmental process started by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee," he said. Congress and Left Front had received a blow recently when TMC took control of Malda and Jalpaiguri zilla parishads after several of their members switched over to TMC.