The would-be mayor of Siliguri, Gautam Deb, has said he will introduce ‘mann ki baat’ so as to listen to people’s views from the ground level. In a strong message, Mr Deb also said he will firmly deal with ‘Dalaal raj’ (activities of middlemen) in the town.

Mr Deb and Trinamul Congress veteran Pratul Chakraborty today filed nomination papers for election to the posts of the mayor and chairman, respectively, scheduled to be held at the Siliguri Municipal Corporation (SMC) tomorrow. The duo, accompanied by newly-elected party councillors, Darjeeling district party chief Papiya Ghosh, and district party chairman Alok Chakravarty, submitted the papers to civic body commissioner Sonam Wangdi Bhutia. No other nomination paper was submitted for the two posts.

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“I always believe that the participation of people is very important in a democracy. It should be like a two-way traffic. We are going to introduce direct interaction with the residents at the ground level. It is important to listen to the people. We will listen to the mann ki baat of the people. We will work on the modalities,” Mr Deb said today.

According to him, the initiative will initially be introduced at the borough level. “If it is planned ward-wise, the mayor or the deputy mayor may not be able to visit people regularly to interact with them. It will be better if that is conducted at the borough level. There are 154 notified slums and 22 unregistered slums under the SMC. People will openly express their views if it is held face to face. Primarily, it will be started with five boroughs.

A team of 15-16, including officers, will be divided. The sessions will be video recorded,” he added. As the chairperson of the nominated board of administrators at the SMC earlier, Mr Deb had introduced the ‘Talk to the Chairman’ programme on 11 December last year, where he had been interacting with callers, who informed him of a wide range of civic problems. “It will now be continued as ‘Talk to the Mayor’ programme every Saturday.

People had earlier responded positively,” he said. Meanwhile, in a stern message, Mr Deb said, “We will stop the ‘dalaal raj’ completely. There will be no middlemen. There will be no syndicate raj- -illegal practice in the tender process. I will take action if any such illegal activity is reported. I declare this today. I have seen many hooligans and I have tackled the mafias. I do not fear. The tender process must be transparent. Those who are trying to engage in unauthorised practices, I would like to send the message to them that I will send them to jail. No one will be able to prevent it.”

Sources at the SMC said there had been allegations of involvement of touts in some departments in the civic body. He further made it clear that there will be no compromise with the quality of work. “We will examine the quality of the work regularly. A quality control unit with a laboratory set-up is coming up. The quality of every work will be judged. The payment will be made on time. There will be no delay in the work, else steps like show-cause, blacklisting them will be taken. We will not tolerate any dilly-dallying and not compromise with the quality of work,” Mr Deb said.

The senior TMC leader held discussions with party councillors at the SMC today. Sources said he pulled up Srabani Dutta, the councillor of ward 14 for arriving late. He alerted her, saying she should be careful in the future. Meanwhile, Siliguri MLA of the BJP, Shankar Ghosh, expressed doubts on the implementation of decisions taken by Mr Deb.

“Trinamul Congress is synonymous with corruption, syndicate and mafia raj. Those issues were raised again dominantly when Mr Deb was defeated in the DabgramFulbari Assembly constituency. It is easy to make such tall promises, but it is difficult when the time for action comes. Time will tell whether he has successfully walked the talk. But I do not think he will be able to keep his word in the Trinamul Congress,” Mr Ghosh said.