Kolkata, May 20 (IANS) As an expression of political courtesy, the elected legislators from the opposition Trinamool Congress from eight districts in North Bengal have received invitations to attend the administrative review meeting for the region to be chaired by Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari at Siliguri in Darjeeling district on Wednesday.

“Trinamool is the only opposition party in the state which has elected legislators from the eight districts of North Bengal. Accordingly, all 14 Trinamool Congress legislators have been sent invitations from the Chief Minister’s Office to be present at the meeting,” confirmed an officer from the CMO.

It is learnt that the invitation to the opposition legislator had been sent following the insistence of CM Adhikari in the matter, since he wanted to set an example that the involvement of the opposition legislators and seeking their suggestions on public service is an essential and healthy practice in a democratic system.

Political observers feel that through this gesture, the new Chief Minister also wants to send a subtle message to his predecessor, Mamata Banerjee, during whose 15-year tenure from 2011 to 2026, not a single opposition legislator was invited to any of her official programmes as the Chief Minister.

The system of inviting opposition legislators to official government programmes was also practised by the two previous Marxist Chief Ministers, Late Jyoti Basu and Late Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. However, that practice was stopped totally during the Trinamool Congress 15-year rule, and now started again in the current Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) regime in the state.

Of the 14 Trinamool Congress legislators from the eight districts of North Bengal, one is from Cooch Behar, five are from North Dinajpur, two are from South Dinajpur, and six are from Malda. There is not a single Trinamool Congress legislator from the remaining four districts in North Bengal, namely Darjeeling, Kalimpong, Jalpaiguri and Alipurduar.

After attending the administrative review meeting at Siliguri, CM Adhikari is slated to come back to Kolkata by late afternoon. After returning, he is likely to have a meeting with the top officials of the Border Security Force (BSF) to review the process of land handover from the state government for the erection of barbed fencing at the unfenced borders with Bangladesh in the state.

–IANS

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