Chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Saturday lambasted the Election Commission over its alleged bias to “help” the BJP, producing printouts of purported WhatsApp chats between poll observers and government officials to buttress her charges.

“It is a plan of the Election Commission, to prevent Trinamul from contesting the polls by detaining our party workers, and in turn helping the BJP...They are directing officers-in-charge or other police officers to detain our workers. We will file FIR against such illegal detentions. It is a plan by the BJP and is being implemented by the Election Commission,” Mamata told journalists in Bolpur.

Mamata added that the poll panel should “follow raj dharma and work impartially”. “But if they work like the mouthpiece of the BJP, I have to protest,” she said.

After producing a sheaf of printouts with purported chats among poll observers and district magistrates and police officers, she asked a journalist to check the contents.

“See the chats of election observers... How they are instructing to detain Trinamul workers by marking them trouble-mongers. In their conversations, they are using words like Trinamul goons. How can the Election Commission say goons of Trinamul? I would have had no objection if they said workers,” she said.

“Whose conversations are these? They are conversations of Sudeep Jain (deputy election commissioner) and Vivek Dubey (special observer in Bengal) with police observers and DM and SPs,” she added without revealing the source.

Mamata said the WhatsApp chats bore evidence of the poll panel’s bias and she would move Supreme Court to appeal for an impartial conduct of elections by the EC in future.

“Evidences are here. I tolerated much in 2016. Now I am determined, I will go to the Supreme Court, the highest court of the country, after the election is over. I will pray there (to get directives) for an impartial election to be conducted in the country in future. We will go to the Constitutional Bench. Three persons (of the EC) are working according to the directives of the BJP,” she said.

Mamata also read out a few of the purported WhatsApp exchanges to establish how the EC was detaining Trinamul workers illegally. “All observers of phase 7 and 8 to collect the list of trouble-mongers identified against whom action u/s (under section) 151CrPC is planned from SP/CP concerned. You will be requested to explain to the Commission that you have verified the adequacy and impartial compilation of that list for detention of P-1 (night before the poll) night...” she read out.

“That means it is a plan? What do you mean by plan, Mr Commissioner?” Mamata asked, adding she knew that in the sixth phase of polls in Budbud, Mangalkote and Dum Dum North, her leaders were detained illegally till voting was over.

“My eyes were opened in Nandigram,” she added. “One of my leaders, Abdus Samad, was asked to make his driver sit at the Nandigram police station on poll day. He was a leader of the land movement and he could not move...”

Mamata told her party workers and their family members, including children, to come out to protest and gherao the police station concerned if anyone from the party was illegally detained in the remaining two phases of elections.

“...You will gather at the police station and ask why he or she was illegally detained. You have to move court if needed. You will lodge an FIR if any of the leaders are detained illegally,” Mamata said before leaving for Tarapith Kali Temple in Rampurhat.

“...We have bowed our heads for too long. We have shown more respect than they deserve. We will obviously show our respect but the commission should keep in mind that we are also a political party...” she said.

Mamata asked Birbhum Trinamul district chief Anubrata Mondal to move court if the EC kept him under surveillance this time. Mondal was kept under EC surveillance in the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha polls and 2016 Assembly polls.

She also slammed some government officials for allegedly obeying the BJP’s commands and asked them to work impartially.

A senior BJP leader in Birbhum said what the EC was doing was right as some people from Trinamul had a history of preventing supporters of Opposition parties from voting. “It is necessary to arrest those who try to spread violence or stop voters,” he said.