The Trinamul Congress and the Congress, in an unprecedented bid have joined hands together against the CPM in a cooperative bank election.
The election of the governing body of the Durgapur Steel People’s Cooperative Bank remained due since 2015 and after the Reserve Bank of India gave an ultimatum to the bank authorities, the election was declared for its entire 42 seats. The elected 42 members, according to the bank authorities, will select the new governing body of 12 members.
The Trinamul Congress’s labour arm Inttuc has fielded 33 candidates sharing six seats with the Intuc and three with the Hind Mazdoor Sabha – a socialist outfit. The Inttuc’s district vice president, Abhijit Ghatak explained: “The steel plant workers and the bank’s stakeholders took the decision to fight together against the Citu’s previous history of anarchy and so we simply allowed them to go ahead.” Intuc’s president at the plant, Rajat Dixit, said: “We took the decision to adjust the seats with Inttuc considering the issue of worker’s welfare and benefit.”
The Citu and the Intuc meanwhile have shared a joint forum of workers at the Durgapur Steel Plant since 2015. The Citu, as if now, has failed to field even a single candidate at the bank’s election. Biswarup Banerjee, working president of Citu at DSP said: “Our candidates were denied access to the nomination Centre and were intimidated in presence of the policemen.”