Durgapur: An incident of infighting in Trinamool Congress (TMC) unit surfaced in a village of West Burdwan in front of Kirti Azad, who is TMC's candidate from Bardhaman-Durgapur constituency, on Sunday.
The incident took place in Amrai village of Ward No. 12 in Durgapur Nagar Corporation during campaigning this morning. Azad, who tried to pacify the workers, fell ill and went to take rest at the nearby Sankarananda Anand Ashram temple. The campaign resumed half an hour later.
After the change of powers in 2011, Durgapur Steel Factory contractual workers' union was handed over from CITU to INTTUC. Under the leadership of labour leader Prabhat Chattopadhyay, Ward No 12 TMC leader Sheikh Shahabuddin and others were given the responsibility the union. Since then, there are stray incidents of clashes between rival TMC groups led by Shahabuddin and Aminur Rahman.
A few days ago, the infighting intensified following a change in the committee of Durgapur Steel Factory contractual workers' union under INTTUC state president Ritabrata Banerjee and district president Abhijit Ghatak. Rahman was included in the committee instead of Shahabuddin. Thus a conflict ensued within the TMC unit in Ward No. 12.
On Sunday morning, TMC candidate Kirti Azad had come here to campaign. Shahabuddin was seen getting into an argument with block-2 president Ujjal Mukherjee.
Shahabuddin and his team along with Azad began the procession while Rahman and his men were standing 300 metres away. When the two groups came near each other, clashes broke out between them. Azad tried to separate the two groups but fell ill amid the commotion and took rest at a nearby temple.
Shahabuddin said, "Chaos rose over exchanging greetings with the candidate. When we were walking with the candidate, several unwanted people joined in and started creating a ruckus. I will report the matter to the party leadership so that the miscreants can be punished."
However, no comment was available from Rahman about the incident.
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