Trinamool board sets clean, green goals for Salt Lake

Suman Chakraborti | TNN 

Kolkata: Salt Lake’s residents can look forward to improved water supply, better roads, well-lit streets at night and more regular garbage clearance in the year ahead. 
These are the areas Bidhannagar Municipality’s new Trinamool Congress board will emphasise in its first budget which it will place before the civic body’s newly-elected councillors on Tuesday. Municipality officials saidSalt Lake’s civic budget for 2010-2011, the first ever by a Trinamool Congress board in the history of the township, will have an outlay of around Rs 53 crore. A vote-on-account budget was passed by the previous Left-run board before this year’s civic elections. 
Salt Lake’s civic development was paralysed during the tenure of the Left board ever since the Supreme court scrapped the Bidhannagar Municipality’s new property tax structure way back in the mid-2007. 
Now, the new Trinamool civic board earnestly wants to take up and solve this long issue. 
    Till the property tax dispute gets solved, the main areas to earn revenues for the civic body will be hoardings, parking fees and amusement tax. 
    “One of the main issue that we are going to stress on is providing adequate water supply. Residents of the town have been made to put up with inadequate water supply for a long time. We are in touch with the KMC authorities to provide us 10 million gallon water from Tallah. Also, we have decided not to introduce water tax. For all these reasons, a major allocation from the budget will be given to this sector,” said a civic official. The civic authorities are planning to set up a water treatment plant at the added area of Mahisbathan and for this, there will be an allocation of about Rs one crore. 
    The second most important area that the authorities have identified is the upkeep of roads. “Maintenance of roads have been an area of concern for the civic body over the years,” an official said. The authorities are planning to buy a hot-mix plant somewhere in the added areas that will be beneficial for road repairs and for this, there will be an allocation of about 50 lakh. The total allocation for road repair and maintenance will be around Rs 4 crore. 

 The civic authorities pay around Rs 35 lakh each year for streetlights. There are plans to switch over streetlights to solar and for this there will be an allocation of around 40 lakh. “We will be giving much importance on our clean and green city programme, that includes keeping the township clean and proper waste disposal. For this, we will increase our budgetary allocations on this sector,” an official said. Also, there will be allocations for preparing a map of the township’s existing sewer and drainage lines. 
    “The civic authorities will be trying to improve and develop civic infrastructure of the township and for this and the budget will have proper allocations,” said senior Trinamool councillor and former accounts committee chairman Ashes Mukherjee, who had suggested such proposals in the previous Left run civic board.

Woman civic boss for Salt Lake?

Choice Between Anita Mandal & Sabyasachi Dutta For Top Civic Post

TIMES NEWS NETWORK 

Kolkata: Salt Lake Municipality may get its first woman chairperson. The two names doing the rounds are those of Anita Mandal and Sabyasachi Dutta, Trinamool Congress chairperson Mamata Banerjee announced in Kolkata on Friday after a meeting with the newly elected councillors of the municipality. 
    Mandal’s name came as a surprise, as three names — that of Anupam Dutta, Krishna Chakraborty and Sudhir Saha — had been doing the rounds for the post of Bidhannagar Municipality chairperson. 
    There was some confusion over the matter, as the Trinamool chief did not clearly announce Mandal’s name as chairperson. “Sabyasachi Dutta has been elected the leader of the councillors, but we will have to check out a rule under which we may have to chose a woman councillor to be the chairman of Bidhannagar Municipality. In that case, Anita Mandal will be the chairperson and Sabyasachi Dutta the vice-chairman,” Mamata announced. Anupam Dutta and Debasis Jana were named chairman-in-council members. 
    When contacted, however, Mandal claimed that Mamata had given her the chairperson’s post. “My leader Mamata Banerjee told me she wanted me as chairperson of Bidhannnagar Municipality. I am honoured and will give my best. My aim would be to improve the civic condition of the township,” Mandal said. Sabyasachi Dutta, the other candidate, could not be contacted. 
    Mandal is the daughter of Monoranjan Bhakta, who was a former MP in the Andaman islands. Mandal was also twotime councillor from 1995 to 2000 and again from 2000 to 2005, after which she lost to CPM’s Dilip Ghosh in 2005. This time, she managed to take sweet revenge, edging out Ghosh by a margin of 78 votes. 
    Gaigatha Trinamool MLA Jyotipriya Mullick said Mandal is hardworking and has been in active politics for many years with Trinamool, right from the party’s beginning. “Salt Lake has finally got the right person as chairperson,” Mullick said. 
    Mamata also announced a 20-member expert committee, which would advise the municipal council in the running of the municipality. The committee is chaired by former land reforms commissioner of the West Bengal government, Debabrata Bandyopadhyay, and comprise representatives from bureaucracy, police, judiciary, industry doctors, artists, intellectuals and sportsmen. Among the members are singer Dwijen Mukherjee, footballer Sailen Manna, retired justice G N Roy, former CBI director Upen Biswas and retired IPS officers Rachpal Singh, Sultan Singh and H A Safwi. 
    While Debabrata Banerjee has been a member of Mamata’s Krishi Jami Raksha Committee for a long time, the team also includes members of Mamata’s thinktank — Sunanda Sanyal and Suvaprasanna. Kalyan Kar would represent the IT industry while Bharat Chamber of Commerce president Shyam Sundar Beriwal would represent the Marwari community. Local MLA Kakali Ghosh Dastidar and local MP Sujit Bose are also members of the committee. A few others could be included in the committee, Mamata said. 
    The municipal board would be sworn in on June 15, but Mamata said she had announced the composition in advance “so that the councillors can understand their responsibilities and start functioning”. The composition of the KMC board would be announced on Sunday. “After that, all councillors would start a cleanliness drive in Kolkata and Salt Lake.”

Mamata Banerjee with Trinamool councillors at her home on Friday. On the extreme right is Anita Mandal. Sabyasachi Dutta is standing in the second row