Jitendra Tiwari of Trinamool, MLA of Asansol and former mayor of the city, accused the state government of not allowing Asansol Municipal Corporation to obtain central funds due to politics and avoided meeting with urban development minister Firhad Hakim in Kolkata on Tuesday at night. He told leaders that he will speak only to the prime minister and Trinamool’s head of Congress, Mamata Banerjee, and no one else.
Since Banerjee is on a tour of North Bengal, Tiwari was informed by the party that the CM could meet with him on December 18, said a TMC leader familiar with the development.
This came on a day when former cabinet minister and party heavyweight Suvendu Adhikari stoked speculation that he might join the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) during Union Interior Minister Amit Shah’s visit to the state bound to vote later this week.
Speculation also began in Asansol, where two TMC councilors, known to be close to Tiwari, wrote social media posts praising Adhikari.
In a letter sent to Hakim on Sunday, Tiwari said the state government did not allow the Asansol Municipal Corporation to receive funds amounting to Rs 2 billion from the Center under the smart city project due to political reasons. Although marked as confidential, the letter was leaked.
Tiwari alleged that he wrote to Hakim on the same subject at least five times in the past, but Sunday’s letter was leaked by someone on purpose. “I will discuss these issues only with the chief minister,” he said.
The Asansol MLA also informed the higher education department that it wants to resign from the governing body of two local colleges.
These have caused the TMC great embarrassment as the BJP won two adjacent Lok Sabha seats in the West Burdwan district in 2019.
The events have sparked speculation that Tiwari, who is the chairman of TMC’s district unit, could leave the party in the run-up to the crucial assembly elections in about five months.
“… I am very aggrieved to say that our city was chosen by the Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India, under the Smart City Mission project that, if you had allowed it, our city could have received funds worth Rs 2000 crore would be very crucial for the development of the city, ”Tiwari wrote in a letter to Hakim on Sunday.
“… Due to political reasons, the state government did not allow us to make a profit,” Tiwari wrote.
The Union minister of state, Babul Supriyo, is the deputy of Asansol, while the adjacent seat of Bardhaman-Durgapur is represented by another minister of state of the Union, SS Ahluwalia.
The region has a considerable non-Bengali and Muslim population. Asansol is the second largest city in South Bengal. It is located in the largest coal mining and industrial belt in the state.
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