Congress takes lead in ward cleanup

KOLKATA: Though Swachh Bharat is a BJP campaign, in certain wards of Kolkata, it’s Congress who was seen taking an initiative to remove the election banners and flags following the KMC elections. While in ward 49 the Congress campaign materials have already been removed, in wards 48 and 51, the process of dismantling is on.
Congress candidate Mohua Das of ward 51 said that they were taking this initiative for the very first time.“Around 30 to 40 banners have already been dismantled and around 50 to 60 remain which we’ll clean by Wednesday evening. Around 15 of our party members are at work in this speedy dismantling process,” she added.
A Congress worker near Ankur Dutta Lane, who was already working on removing the party hoardings, mentioned that the walls which had their party posters will be white-washed to make it look clean. The campaign materials were dumped in the party office and a few days later, the party will decide what to do about their disposal. Atanu Dey Sarkar, a Congress worker in the area, said, “We believe in keeping our ward clean. BJP is the one talking about Swachh Bharat, but in reality it is us who are keeping the streets clean”.
Monalisa Banerjee, the Congress candidate from ward 49, said, “I removed almost 70% of the banners put up in my area. I don’t believe in visual pollution, I expect the streets of my ward to look clear.” The sitting councillor from the ward, Sanchita Mondal of Trinamool, however, didn’t think it was a good idea for her party to remove all the banners from the ward. “We are waiting for the result day to remove the banners because their influence doesn’t end with the elections. Also, vote counting will happen in this ward. So, it doesn’t look nice if all the banners are taken down before that. The other parties know that they have negligible presence in this ward and that is why they are finishing off the dismantling work right away,” she added.
The BJP candidate from the same ward, Sonushree Singh, had a different take. “We didn’t really have too many banners to dismantle because the Trinamool workers had taken our banners and flags down throughout the campaign season to put up their own banners. Whatever we have left, we will remove in the next two days,” he said.
Bablu Karim, BJP candidate from ward 75, claimed that they have already removed 25% of the party banners and in the next two days the rest will be removed.
Rupa Bagchi, CPM’s ward 32 candidate, said that there were 40-50 banners in the area. “We will use 10-15 men to dismantle these banners within two to three days.”