Trinamul Congress (TMC) leaders will visit the cyclone-hit Maynaguri area of north Bengal on Friday and meet the affected families, after which they will approach the Election Commission (EC) once again for permission to provide relief to the people, sources said.

The TMC delegation will include party leaders Derek O'Brien, Dola Sen, Nadimul Haque, Sagarika Ghose, Saket Gokhale and others who had attended a meeting with the full bench of the EC on Monday and subsequently, staged a 24-hour protest in Delhi.

Along with a demand that heads of central agencies should be changed, the delegation had also urged the poll panel to allow the West Bengal government to provide relief to the tornado-affected areas.

The sources said the TMC will approach the EC again after the delegation visits the affected areas and if the poll panel does not give the clearance, the ruling party in West Bengal will approach the president.

In a post on X on Thursday, Gokhale wondered that when the EC has allowed the Assam government to release money to Bihu committees, why is the West Bengal government being stopped from providing relief to the families affected by the calamity.

"Why is the Election Commission giving special treatment to BJP-ruled states while denying the same to others?" the Rajya Sabha MP of the TMC asked.

He mentioned the 24-hour dharna of the TMC in Delhi and said, "One of our demands was simple and purely humanitarian: to allow the West Bengal Govt to release assistance to 1,600 people to rebuild their homes which were destroyed in the recent Jalpaiguri cyclone." "Till now, the EC has not allowed this simple and urgent humanitarian demand to us," Gokhale said.

"On the other hand, the EC has allowed the BJP-ruled Govt of Assam to release Rs 35 crore to over 2,300 Bihu committees for celebration of the festival," he said.

"It is shocking that the EC allows Assam's BJP government to release funds for Bihu but blocks the West Bengal Govt from giving relief to people who lost their homes," Gokhale added.

He said the EC should explain why "different rules and special treatment apply only to BJP-ruled states especially when its mandate is to ensure a level playing field for everyone".

Senior TMC leader Abhishek Banerjee claimed on Wednesday that West Bengal Governor C V Ananda Bose reached out to Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Rajiv Kumar regarding issues raised by his party, including the permission to rebuild houses devastated by a storm in Jalpaiguri, but the latter was not talking to the governor.

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