Bengal panchayat polls: Trinamool's Abhishek Banerjee to embark on 60-day outreach campaign

Kolkata, April 25 Ahead of the panchayat polls in West Bengal, Trinamool Congress national general secretary and MP Abhishek Banerjee will, on Tuesday, embark on a 60-day outreach campaign programme covering all the districts of the state.

The outreach campaign programme will kickstart from Cooch Behar in north Bengal and end in coastal South 24 Parganas's Kakdwip district on June 24.

According to Banerjee, the main aim of the outreach campaign programme is to get the best and clean candidates for Trinamool Congress for the forthcoming rural civic body polls. "What is more important is that the candidates will be chosen not just on the basis of the choice of the party's district leadership. Rather the selection will be on the basis of the choice of the common people they want to see as Trinamool Congress candidates," he said.

This will be the first time in the entire country that a political party is making a selection of their candidates for an election after seeking opinion from the common people, he added.

"Our motto is to field candidates who can best serve the people once they are elected. Right choice of candidates will also ensure free, fair and peaceful polls without any sort of bloodshed. There will be secret ballot voting at the camp offices on this count. People can also express their opinions online in this matter," Abhishek Banerjee said." he said.

The entire process will be monitored by a 22-member election committee headed by veteran Trinamool Congress leader and former Lok Sabha member Subrata Bakshi. The election committee members, which will monitor the entire election process, will not be able to nominate any candidate for any of the three tiers in the panchayat system for which polls will be happening this year.

Meanwhile, Leader of the opposition Suvendu Adhikari has claimed that the programme is basically a public-relations exercise and not a political programme in that sense. "The common people do not have any interest in the programme and we are also ignoring it," he said.