Congress-led UDF wins big in Kerala local body by-polls; wrests three panchayats from LDF
Of the 31 contested seats, the UDF won 17, the ruling CPI-M-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) won 11, and the BJP secured three seats.
Prior to the elections to the Kolkata Municipal Corporation and other municipal bodies, Congress chief, Mamata Banerjee will convene a meeting of the party at Netaji Indoor Stadium on 2 March.
And for probably the first time, there will be personalised invitation cards with the names of individual invitees printed along with a barcode. The invitation card contains two parts ~ in one part, name, designation and district of the party functionaries would be mentioned. The other part carries four guidelines for the party functionaries, both in English and Bengali.
The guidelines state, among other things, that it is mandatory for the invitees to bring the card on the day of the event failing which they would not be allowed to enter the venue and also that they would be required to produce the card as and when required. A party insider said that in the wake of the Delhi riots, security has been tightened and personalised invitation cards along with bar codes have been issued to keep away uninvited.
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Only those who are invited with personalised cards will be allowed to enter the venue. A senior leader of the party, requesting anonimity, said, “We have come across some disgruntled workers and even councillors who though they belong to Trinamul Congress might cross over to the BJP. This is a very crucial meeting before the polls. We have to chalk out the strategies of the ensuing poll. We don’t want our party secrets to be divulged to those who are not loyal to the party. That is why we have to maintain secrecy, especially when our party chief will brief us about our strategy during the campaiign for the municipal poll.”
Party insiders said the KMC poll is very crucial as it will be a precursor to the Assembly polls next year. Last year, after the debacle in the Lok Sabha election, Mamata Banerjee took the help of poll strategist Prasant Kishore and launched the Didi Ke Bolo programme where MLAs, councillors were asked to visit the households in their respective constituemcies or wards and even spend a night in a local worker’s home.
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