Monday, 23 December 2024
Monday, 23 December 2024
Bengal stayed true to its reputation with violence and intimidation ahead of and during the bypolls to six Assembly constituencies on Wednesday.
Bypolls were held in 31 Assembly seats across the country. Plus, in Jharkhand, 43 of the 81 Assembly seats voted on Wednesday.
The polling was peaceful elsewhere. The only death reported was from Bengal.
Till 5 pm, the Election Commission had received 342 complaints from the six seats in Bengal, of which political parties had lodged 75. The maximum number, 66, was from the BJP.
A mob chased Raju Lohar, the BJP nominee for Madarihat in north Bengal, around 692 km from Calcutta, and damaged his vehicle when he went to visit a booth in Munjai where a BJP polling agent was not being allowed inside.
“TMC goons have attacked BJP Madarihat poll candidate Rahul Lohar in conspicuous presence of Mamata police,” BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari, leader of Opposition in the Bengal Assembly, posted on his X handle. “Rahul Lohar is not only a BJP candidate but also a renowned Tribal leader of the tea garden areas. Tribals are not safe in West Bengal.”
The BJP’s Manoj Tigga, who had represented Madarihat in the Assembly till he got the ticket to contest last summer’s Lok Sabha polls and won, said BJP polling agents were being threatened.
“Our polling agents are not being allowed inside the booths. Our candidate [in Madarihat] was attacked while the police stood as mere onlookers,” Tigga said.
News television cameras captured a bunch of people asking Lohar why he wasn’t seen in the area earlier. A Trinamul leader later said that the local people were unhappy with Tigga because he had ignored the constituency.
In Sitai, also in north Bengal, the BJP candidate, Deepak Roy, walked out of a booth at the Hokdah Adabari SSK primary school with two sellotape strips in his hands which he claimed to have ripped from an electronic voting machine.
“This is a serious violation of the election process,” Roy said, after which a heated exchange took place between him and the polling officials.
“Sitai Assembly TMC candidate and wife of Cooch Behar MP Jagadish Chandra Basunia, Sangita Roy is directing central force personnel to sit down and refrain from doing their duty. She is extremely bothered and displeased that they are doing their duty in front of the polling booths,” Adhikari wrote on X. “The ECI, Chief Electoral Officer of West Bengal are you in control of the by polls or TMC candidates have taken over? Are they supposed to instruct and control CRPF, CISF, SSB and BSF personnel?”
The violence and intimidation did not remain confined to the two north Bengal constituencies, or just to the areas where the bypolls were being held.
In Bhatpara, around 33 km north of Calcutta, bullets flew and crude bombs exploded in the morning at a tea shop, killing Ashok Sau, a former Trinamul ward president.
Bhatapara, which has a history of political violence, is close to Naihati, where polling was being held. Trinamul’s Barrackpore MP, Partha Bhowmik, and former MP Arjun Singh – who has switched several times between the Trinamul and BJP and settled down with the saffron party ahead of this year’s Lok Sabha polls – accused each other over the murder of Sau.
In Haroa, around 40 km east of Calcutta, where the Indian Secular Front (ISF) contested with the support of the Left parties, the ISF candidate, Piyarul Islam, was heckled at a booth in Deganga’s Mohabbatpur.
“At Booth 135 in Deganga from early morning our polling agents were assaulted and thrown out of the booth. The agent returned some time later and continued with his duties,” said Prosenjit Bose, an economist and political activist, who was accompanying Islam around the constituency.
The ISF nominee wrote a letter to the returning officer of the Haroa Assembly constituency requesting security for the polling agents.
“A huge gang of hoodlums led by Aser Ali Malik (panchayat samity member), Manipur Islam (Dadpur panchayat Pradhan), his brother Amirul Islam, TMC leader Abdul Hai have been obstructing the entry of my polling agents in these polling stations since morning. They are also threatening the voters and trying to rig the elections,” wrote the candidate.
The ISF nominee later demanded repoll in 37 booths in the Haroa Assembly.
Bengal Congress chief Shubhankar Sarkar said the ruling Trinamul had turned the bypolls into a farce.
Union Minister and BJP Bengal unit president Sukanta Majumdar accused the Trinamul of rigging.
“Even in the bypolls, TMC resorts to fake voters. In Naihati, a TMC miscreant was caught by people while trying to cast a fraudulent vote. Claiming to be an agent for the ruling party’s candidate, he failed to present any valid ID,” Majumdar wrote on X with a video clip.
He added: “Shockingly, Mamata Banerjee’s loyal police force stepped in, rescuing him from the public instead of upholding justice. Is TMC, along with its sycophantic police force, acting out of fear of the people’s voice?”
TMC spokesperson Kunal Ghosh termed the allegation baseless and asserted that opposition parties were concocting narratives to undermine the ruling party’s electoral prospects.
The average voters’ turnout in the six Assembly seats of Sitai, Madarihat, Naihati, Haroa, Midnapore and Taldangra in Bengal was around 69.2 per cent, according to Election Commission of India (ECI) data.
Besides Bengal, there was only one incident of violence reported. Naresh Meena, an Independent candidate from the Deoli-Uniara constituency in Rajasthan, was captured on video slapping a sub-divisional magistrate.
In Sheopur district of Madhya Pradesh, the district administration put up the BJP and Congress candidates for the Vijapur Assembly bypoll under its monitoring in different guest houses to prevent flare-ups and ensure peaceful voting.
