Governor C.V. Ananda Bose on Saturday passed a clear missive to state police and the State Election Commission to prevent violence as he visited different places in Cooch Behar, a district that saw rampant clashes since the announcement of the July 8 rural polls.

“Adequate security forces should be deployed across the district. The police should conduct effective raids to seize firearms, explosives and bombs used by goons.... Preventive arrests should be made extensively and gang leaders perpetrating violence should not be allowed to hold the society to ransom,” Bose told journalists here this afternoon.

On Friday night, the governor reached Cooch Behar from Kalimpong by road. On Saturday morning, a delegation of BJP leaders and legislators led by Nisith Pramanik, the local MP and Union minister of state for home affairs, met him at the Circuit House.

“We apprised him how Trinamul is organising blatant attacks on workers, leaders and candidates of all parties in the Opposition,” said Pramanik.

Around 11am, Bose left the Circuit House and visited a private nursing home in the town where BJP candidate Krishna Rabidas, attacked by suspected Trinamul supporters, is admitted.

From there, his convoy headed to Dinhata. On his way, a group of CPM and Congress supporters stopped his convoy and handed him a memorandum. In Dinhata, Bose visited the houses of two BJP workers who died in recent violence.

He also visited the Dinhata subdivisional hospital where he met the wife of a Trinamul candidate whom the police arrested in connection with an old case. The woman alleged that the police had also assaulted her.

In the evening, Bose also spoke over the phone with family members of Babu Rehman, the Trinamul worker gunned down at Jaridharala village near the India-Bangladesh border.

Bose told the media that he would continue to visit violence-prone areas.

“Let me make it clear that Raj Bhavan is on the move. I will try to visit all such areas prone to violence. People can talk to me. Calcutta High Court has come up with a number of orders pertaining to the elections that should be implemented at the grassroots by the state election commission and the police,” he said.

Trinamul leaders said the governor was biased.

Udayan Guha, Trinamul’s Dinhata MLA and the north Bengal development minister, said: “The governor is acting at the BJP’s behest. He was in Cooch Behar for a poll campaign.”