No Second Term
Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharjee is not running for a second term and when KMC goes to the polls on May 30, it will be technically his last day in office. In an exclusive interview to Outlook four days before the elections, the Mayor explained why he wants to call it quits. “In a parliamentary democracy,” he said, “it is important to allow others to come in and bring in fresh ideas.” He agreed that it was a challenging task being in-charge of the civic responsibilities of a “complex” city like Calcutta and he said that he felt satisfied with his achievements in areas like cleaning up corruption and putting in place efficient pumping and drainage systems. As an example of his anti-corruption efforts, he cited his mandate to computerize the details of all city contracts, including any deals or payouts involving the city’s various construction projects. One of the goals of the mandatory computerization program was to prevent municipal workers from getting kick-backs or taking bribes in return for releasing payments (areas where corruption has been rampant in the past). He said that among his regrets is his lack of success in clearing the pavements of a variety of unauthorized but permanent structures like shops, clubs, political party offices and even temples.
Exact Same Spots
Flags, banners and posters representing the three main political parties in the fray – CPIM, Congress and Trinamool –have appeared all over the city. Usually the three parties give each other some space and put up their respective banners in separate spaces. This time, there is a noticeable change in trend that has the parties jostling for all the exact same spots. In some areas, the party banners have been planted in the ground so close to each other, they look like three shoots of the same plant growing out of the earth. But here’s the funniest visual example of this inadvertent trend of displaying unity among the parties: I saw a man in a CPIM T-shirt, pulling a rickshaw with a TMC poster hanging from it and a Congress flag fluttering near the handle.