‘Not according to rules’: HC nixes Jalpaiguri civic board dissolution, appointment of administrator
Times of India | 9 September 2026The board of councillors can now run the municipality.
On Aug 27, the state dissolved the civic body and appointed SDO Moin Ahmed as administrator after civic body chief Saikat Chatterjee tendered his resignation. Chatterjee, a Trinamool neta himself, was voted out by Mamata Banerjee-loyalist councillors after he met rebel camp neta Ritabrata Banerjee. The councillors moved the circuit bench on Aug 31, challenging the govt orders, calling the appointment undemocratic.
In the no-confidence motion, Chatterjee had received one vote while 16 councillors voted against him. While two Congress councillors and the only CPM councillor abstained from voting, three Trinamool councillors were absent.
Reacting to the court verdict, TMC councillors’ lawyer Bikramaditya Ghosh said: “The court observed that the dissolution of the Jalpaiguri Municipality and the appointment of the SDO as the administrator were not done in accordance with the rules. So the orders were set aside. The board of councillors has now automatically been revived and they are therefore free to run the municipality.”
Chatterjee was sworn in as the chairperson in Nov last year. In 2022, he had drawn widespread criticism for allegedly rigging the municipal election.
