Cooch Behar, July 15 (Siliguri Chronicle) – The Trinamool Congress-led Cooch Behar Municipality on Monday held a ritual ceremony ahead of installing a statue of Maharaja Jagaddipendranarayan, the last ruler of the former princely state of Cooch Behar.
The event took place less than 48 hours after Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee stepped in to resolve a standoff between the municipality and the north Bengal development department.
Civic chairman Rabindranath Ghosh took part in the “bhoomi puja” at Amtala on the banks of the Sagardighi in the town centre. He was joined by descendants of the royal family, NBSTC chairman and former MP Partha Pratim Roy, and Trinamool district chief Avijit De Bhowmik. Minister Udayan Guha, however, was absent.
“The Maharaja’s statue, which will have a height of seven feet and two inches, will be installed at the site soon. Today (Monday), we performed the puja at the site finalised by the municipality,” civic chairman Ghosh said.
Last week, when the municipality deployed workers to clean the site near the north Bengal development department’s office, some department employees—under minister Udayan Guha—halted the work. Guha is known to have differences with Ghosh.
As the infighting within Cooch Behar Trinamool became publicly evident, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee spoke to Guha on Saturday. He assured her there would be no further issues regarding the statue’s installation.
Following this, Ghosh and the municipality moved quickly to prepare for Monday’s event.
The puja was carried out smoothly at the same site on Monday.
It was seen as a sign that Mamata Banerjee had managed to ease factional tensions within the party’s Cooch Behar unit, with Guha and Ghosh being two of the district’s most prominent Trinamool leaders.
However, Minister Guha’s absence from the event did not go unnoticed by political observers. However, he said: “I have assured the chief minister that the statue will be installed and we will extend all necessary cooperation.”
Encroachment charge
Udayan Guha found himself at the centre of a fresh controversy over the installation of statues of his father, Kamal Guha, in Dinhata. The senior Guha, a former Bengal minister and All India Forward Bloc leader, passed away in 2007.
On Monday, a group of Dinhata residents, led by social worker Anwar Hossain, submitted a letter to the district magistrate’s office, alleging that three statues of Kamal Guha had already been installed on government land, and a fourth was being set up near the sub-divisional court in Dinhata.
The letter did not name Udayan, but clearly indicated his “influence” in the “encroachment” of government land. “We have requested the district magistrate to probe the case and take appropriate legal steps. Such encroachment is a blatant violation of the law,” said Hossain.
Contacted for comment, the minister denied the allegations.
“The land where the memorial of Kamal Guha has been developed is registered in the name of Hemanta Basu Corner (an organisation formed after a Forward Bloc leader),” he said.
