Kolkata: Kolkata Municipal Corporation will have no Leader of Opposition, as none of the opposition parties managed to get the requisite numbers needed for the LOP status.
"According to law, to get the status of Leader of Opposition in the KMC a party needs to have at least 15 seats. But no opposition party has the number. The Left Front is claiming the Leader of Opposition status, but they can't have that position because there is no provision for granting LOP status to a front. So there will be no LOP post in the KMC this time," Mayor Sovan Chatterjee told PTI. After the last election in April to the 144-member KMC,the TMC has 114 members, CPI(M)-led 10 party Left Front 15 members, BJP seven, Congress five and the Independents three.
"There can't be no Leader of opposition status. There can be leader of Left Front but as per law there can be no LOP status as no single party has won 15 seats," KMC chairperson Mala Ray said.
The Left Front which cried foul over the decision said that the TMC doesn't believe in democratic practices and that is why they don't want an LOP in KMC.
"We didn't go to polls as an individual party. We have fought all the polls as a united Left Front, so we do deserve the status of Leader of Opposition. But as the TMC doesn't believe in healthy democracy, it does not want to give an opposition status," CPI-M leader Rabin Deb said.
Chatterjee however took a dig at Deb's claim by saying that the TMC too was denied the post of Leader of Opposition after the 2006 Assembly polls, when the TMC manged to win only 29 seats.
That was one short of 30 needed for the status of Leader of Opposition in the 294-member state Assembly, he pointed out.
"Later, Partha Chatterjee was given the Leader of Opposition status after winning a by-election to get the required number," Chatterjee said.
