Violence continues in Bengal, several areas to vote again
The West Bengal state election commission has ordered repolling at 697 booths in 19 districts following reports of vote-tampering and violence.
The West Bengal state election commission (SEC) ordered repolling on Monday at 697 booths in 19 districts where voting for the rural elections has been declared void, a notification, seen by HT, said hours after a meeting of the commission on Sunday evening during which it took stock of vote-tampering and violence across the state.
Among districts where repolling was announced, Murshidabad has the highest number of booths at 175, followed by Malda with 110. Violence-hit Nadia will see repolling in 89 booths, while North and South 24 Parganas districts will witness repolling in 46 and 36 booths, respectively.
Sporadic violence continued in several parts of north and south Bengal on Sunday, all political parties alleged a day after at least 18 people were killed during three-tier panchayat elections in 20 districts. A TMC worker who was injured in a bomb explosion at Sitalkuchi in Cooch Behar district on Saturday died on Sunday when he was being taken from a local hospital to Siliguri town, police said.
With this, the death toll in Saturday’s violence increased to 19, taking the number of deaths since June 9 to 38.
On Saturday, lives were lost in eight of 20 districts amid clashes, looting of ballot papers and alleged rigging. Darjeeling and Kalimpong were the only districts where polling was completely peaceful.
The violence continued on Sunday in Cooch Behar, North Dinajpur and South Dinajpur in the north Bengal region while clashes took place in Murshidabad, Malda, Howrah, South 24 Parganas and East Burdwan districts in south Bengal.
While the Trinamool Congress (TMC) government continued to maintain silence on the spate of violence, state election commissioner Rajiva Sinha called a meeting at the SEC office in Kolkata on Sunday afternoon to review the demands raised by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Congress and the CPI(M) for a repoll at a large number of polling booths.
“We will take a decision by tonight,” Sinha told reporters earlier in the day, before the orders were issued.
The poll results are scheduled to be announced on July 11.
“We apprehend more violence after the results are out,” said Bengal Congress president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury while visiting the family of a Congress worker killed in Murshidabad hours before the polling began.
Clashes between TMC workers and followers of a disgruntled party worker contesting as an independent candidate took place at Shamserganj in Murshidabad district on Sunday morning.
“Crude bombs were hurled by people from both sides. A police contingent rushed to the spot and detained the husband of the independent candidate,” a police officer said on condition of anonymity.
In another incident, four TMC workers were injured when bombs were hurled at their homes in the Raninagar area of Murshidabad.
Followers of the CPI(M) and Congress, who are allies, clashed with TMC workers at Saidapur village in the district’s Raghunathganj area, police said.
At least 10 Congress workers were allegedly injured when police resorted to a baton charge to clear a road blockade at Murshidabad’s Beldanga. The Congress blocked NH-34 in protest against Saturday’s violence.
In Malda, a police officer suffered a head injury when a mob attacked him with sticks in the Harishchandrapur area.
“He was admitted to a district hospital,” said a police officer who did not want to be named.
In Howrah district, the home of an independent candidate’s brother was attacked in the Jagatballavpur area, police said.
In the north Bengal region, some miscreants ransacked a North Bengal State Transport Corporation bus and set two private cars on fire at Chakulia in North Dinajpur district.
North Dinajpur witnessed large-scale violence on Saturday in which two Congress supporters and a TMC worker died.
The repoll is an important step to restore some confidence in the state’s electoral process among the public but the large-scale violence called into question the role of the state election commission over its failure to ensure smooth conduct of polling. The poll body was initially opposed to the idea of deploying additional forces and was even pulled up by the Calcutta high court. In a state where violence at the booth level is deeply seeped in the political culture, the election watchdog ought to have been more competent and serious about its responsibility.
Mohit Sengupta, the North Dinajpur district Congress unit president, said: “The state police and SEC acted as TMC functionaries on Saturday.”
Kanaiyalal Agarwal, the TMC district president, accused the BJP and the Congress of attacking ruling party supporters.
“TMC became their target,” Agarwal said.
Basudev Sarkar, the BJP’s North Dinajpur district unit president, said: “Government employees deployed to conduct the polls are raising allegations of rigging. This is more than sufficient to declare repoll in hundreds of booths.”