Supporters of the BJP, CPM and the Congress came together for a dharna in front of a police station in north Calcutta on Sunday to protest what they alleged were violence and electoral malpractice by “Trinamul-backed goons” during the civic polls.
Although top leaders of the Opposition said it was a “one-off incident”, several party members claimed the protest was a “spontaneous resistance to Trinamul muscle-flexing”.
“This was just a coincidence. All of them were incidentally at Burtolla police station at the same time to stage a protest. It wasn’t a pre-planned programme,” CPM leader Rabin Deb said.
BJP chief spokesperson Samik Bhattacharya also said the timings matching was a “mere coincidence”.
The Congress and the Left had previously come together in the 2016 and 2021 Assembly polls. In 2018, ahead of the panchayat elections in Bengal, BJP and CPM workers had taken out joint rallies against Trinamul in several villages.
However, the three parties converged for a protest for the first time in Calcutta on Sunday. Each of the three parties accused Trinamul of rigging, attacking and injuring candidates and threatening Opposition booth agents and voters in all 144 wards of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation.
While complaints of poll process vitiation poured in from different parts of the city, the day passed off without any major incident or loss of life. The state election commission said voting “went off peacefully, barring a few sporadic incidents of violence”.
Calcutta police, however, said there had been multiple bomb blasts in ward 36 in which at least two persons had suffered injuries.
The CPM alleged that a woman poll agent in ward 45 was assaulted, leaving her with a cut in her lips. At another booth in the same ward, supporters of the Congress and Trinamul clashed.
The CPM alleged that its agents were driven out of many booths in several wards. CPM workers and leaders blocked roads in Bhowanipore and Bagha Jatin.
Meena Devi Purohit, the BJP nominee for ward 22, alleged attack by Trinamul. “I was assaulted.… I suffered blows and even my clothes were torn,” she told The Telegraph.
Other BJP leaders complained that one of the booths in Purohit’s ward was ransacked and her agent beaten up.
The saffron ecosystem circulated a video that showed another BJP candidate, Rajarshi Lahiri from ward 86, being thrashed when he allegedly caught hold of a fake voter.
“He was again beaten by Trinamul goons when he tried to talk to his supporters about the incident on Facebook Live. He was later treated at a private hospital,” a BJP source said.
The Congress was furious with the way Calcutta police reacted to the attack on Amitabha Chakraborty, a polling agent of party nominee Santosh Pathak in ward 45.
“The manner in which Amitabhada was roughed up has proved how the police were attacking Opposition parties.… The state poll panel and the police have proved that they are stooges of the ruling party,” a Congress leader said.
A queue of voters in front of a booth in Calcutta on Sunday. Sanat Kr Sinha
All the three major Opposition parties demanded re-poll in several wards with heavy security. The CPM asked for re-poll in 17 wards and at around 50 booths spread across 10 other wards. The Congress has demanded re-poll at 50-odd booths in six wards. Former Congress MLA Nepaldeb Mahato said the numbers might go up.
The BJP demanded that the state election commission countermand the entire CMC polls and order re-election. “What happened today is a farce. This was no election,” BJP’s Bhattacharya said.
The Opposition parties alleged that the poll panel was functioning on the diktat of Mamata Banerjee and Abhishek Banerjee instead of being independent.
“The commission has kept a single day between voting and counting. The counting happens on Tuesday. They never intended to hold re-polls and we don’t know what will happen to our demands,” CPM’s Deb said.
