Dinhata has become the third municipality after Sainthia and Budge Budge for the Trinamul Congress to command majority before polls are held on February 27.
Trinamul is set to win all 16 wards at the Dinhata municipality in Cooch Behar district uncontested as the BJP on Thursday announced that it would opt out of three seats where two candidates each are in fray.
When the filing of nominations closed on Wednesday, it emerged that only Trinamul had fielded candidates in seven of the 16 wards. When scrutiny was held on Thursday, Dinhata subdivisional officer Rana Biswas, who is also the returning officer, said nominations of all four CPM candidates stood rejected as none of them had submitted affidavits. For the same reason, the nomination of the single Congress candidate was cancelled.
“BJP candidates had filed nominations in eight seats but today, proposers of four of them went to the SDO office and said thy hadn’t signed on forms. So, their nominations were cancelled. The nomination of another BJP candidate was cancelled as he had not submitted an affidavit,” said a source.
After the scrutiny, the SDO announced that there were more than one candidate in three wards — 6, 8 and 10. So, it became clear that Trinamul bagged 13 wards uncontested.
Later in the day, Cooch Behar district BJP president Sukumar Roy said: “We will not contest from any of the three wards where we have nominees because Trinamul unleashed a reign of terror,” said Roy. The last date to withdraw the nominations is February 12.
Udayan Guha, the Trinamul MLA of Dinhata, said the BJP could not find candidates for most wards and pulled out three nominees from three seats because it realised that the party’s defeat was inevitable.