767 voters of the Durga Nagar Tea Garden call for boycott, MLA Mihir Kanti calls it opposition conspiracy

In yet another boycott call for the ongoing Lok Sabha elections, 767 voters of the Durga Nagar Tea Garden decided not to cast their vote today. The area that comes under the Udharbond Assembly constituency doesn’t have a metalled all-weather road, causing daily trouble for the people belonging to the tea tribe. The crowd dissatisfied with the work of the current MLA, Mihir Kanti Shome of the BJP has decided to take this step after making several rounds to Shome’s office and even knocking on the door of the District Administration. Shome reached the garden with other officials from the administration to hear their concerns and ask them to vote. While addressing the media, Shome conveniently blamed it upon the opposition calling it a conspiracy and used bureaucratic jargon to free himself from any blame.

The Presiding Officer and other polling staff have been waiting with their set-up ready for the locals to vote at 1110 No Durganagar Cha Bagan L P School since morning. But when even a single was not cast till the afternoon, the administration was made aware of that. The voters of that tea garden staged a protest outside the polling station when the local MLA reached the spot. Their demand, votes will only be cast when their road is repaired. The locals gathered there to protest, talking to our reporter said, “If the road will be repaired by evening all of us will go making a queue to vote but until then we boycott it. We have been waiting on it for so long and we have reached out to the MLA innumerable times, he just keeps on postponing the work. Our children go to school by crossing the waterlogged road daily, and women of our area face even more difficulty. There are potholes under the water and there is a risk of falling into them”.

When the MLA tried to convince them to vote today and the work for road repaid will start, they didn’t buzz by his assurance. Regarding this, a local there said, “We have lost trust in him. It is not one person’s decision to boycott the vote. It is a united decision and the public is not in favour of voting today”.

Mihir Kanti Shome answering the questions of the reporters on why the repair work was not done said, “Our government came to power in 2016 and before that, there were no roads in Udharbond. Our government has worked to make roads and connect the remote interior parts of the area. This 400-metre road has already been sanctioned and the tender has also been passed. Unfortunately, the tender gets approved during the rainy season, before March. This tender was already passed in the 2023-24 financial year. Now everything comes in a package format and one contractor has 5-6 works. Currently, the work is going on in the Arkatipore area by the same contractor and after that work is finished, this will also start. This amount of time has to be given. Not a single tea garden had roads before 2016”.

The MLA has alleged that it is a conspiracy to get media attention. When asked about the conspiracy, the MLA said, “It is the trick of the opposition parties. These innocent people are being fed with false information. Last night, there was a meeting where this conspiracy was hatched. They don’t want development and that’s the vested interest behind this boycott. One section wants to vote, another section is forcing them against it”. But the question that remains to be asked is why would the opposition ask them to boycott when they can ask them to vote against the party in power.