All eyes on Asansol, Trinamool Congress' road to redemption

It has all zeroed in on one solitary road in West Bengal as Asansol Municipal Corporation election is scheduled to go to polls on January 22. The road in ward number 74 of Asansol is in the limelight as residents had boycotted the Assembly polls over a broken thoroughfare. So will the voters come out this time or not?

Asansol (West Bengal): It has all zeroed in on one solitary road in West Bengal as Asansol Municipal Corporation election is scheduled to go to the polls to elect a new civic board on January 22. The village road in ward number 74 of Asansol city is hogging headlines among many other issues in the election that is seen as Trinamol Congress' road to redemption.

Within the limits of ward number 74 of Asansol, is the semi-rural settlement of Patmohona. It was this Patmohona area, which had created ripples in the 2021 April-May Assembly elections when its residents gave a call to boycott the polls. The reason, the protracted issue of the broken thoroughfare. Promises and later on cajoling did not do any good. On polling day, Patmohona did not reach the booths. Their protest continued for a decent road linking the area to Asansol city centre.

This time when the poll bugle was sounded for the Asansol civic body, Ujjwal Chattopadhyay, the vice-chairman of Asansol-Durgapur Development Authority (ADDA), spent no time. His first move was to inaugurate the repairing works of the Patmohona road. Incidentally, Ujjwal is also a contesting candidate from ward number 74 on a Trinamool Congress ticket and is pitted against CPI(M)’s Priyabrata Sarkar.

Ujjwal Chattopadhyay had contested the last Assembly elections as a Trinamool Congress nominee from the Kulti seat but had to bite the dust as BJP’s Ajoy Kumar Poddar had the last laugh from the seat. Local residents and political watchers of the area attribute Ujjwal’s defeat to his unfulfilled promises, one of them being the repairing of Patmohona road.

But, the residents of Patmohona refuse to budge even after the repairing works were initiated. They want their road in a proper shape and not a dirt track. Anything less than that would only result in a repeat of the last Assembly elections.

Ujjwal’s opponent Priyabrata Sarkar is a resident in the neighbourhood of Patmohona and accuses the ADDA vice-chairman and his rival candidate in the civic polls, as a person who wants to keep problems pending. It is like, as long as the problems are there, people will be after him, pleading with him for a solution. And in return, he will try to win elections using those problems as issues, alleges Sarkar. But, things are different now. People have come to know his tricks and are paying him back on the same coin, added the CPI-M nominee.

Ujjwal denies the allegations and says work has already started on the Patmohona road and he wants everybody to participate in the democratic process.

Will Patmohona accept Ujjwal Chattopadhyay’s initiative to repair the road to Asansol and queue up outside the booths or will the residents continue their protest and stay away from the elections? January 22 has the answers.