Bengal panchayat poll violence: Repolling to be held in 696 booths on 10 July amid presence of central forces

The West Bengal State Election Commission announced that repolling will be held on Monday in all booths where voting for the rural elections has been declared void. Polling will be held again in 696 booths. The booths are spread across 19 districts and repolling will take place from 7 am to 5 pm. Four central forces personnel will be present in each of the booths, besides state police, PTI quoted an official as saying. The SEC, which held a meeting on Sunday evening, went through reports of vote-tampering and violence which affected polling in many places, and passed the order, an official said. Among districts where repolling was announced, Murshidabad has the highest number of booths at 175, followed by Malda with 112. Violence-hit Nadia will see repolling in 89 booths, while North and South 24 Parganas districts will witness repolling in 46 and 36 booths respectively. At least 15 people have been killed in violence that erupted in the state during voting for the three-tier panchayat polls in the state. Bengal governor likely to meet Amit Shah, submit report on violence Meanwhile, West Bengal Governor CV Ananda Bose on Sunday flew to New Delhi, where he is likely to meet Union Home Minister Amit Shah and submit a report on the violence that took place during the panchayat elections in the state, PTI quoted an official as saying. “The governor is visiting Delhi. He is supposed to meet Union Home Minister Amit Shah and submit a report on the panchayat polls held in West Bengal on Saturday,” the official added. Bose is likely to meet Shah on Monday morning, he said, adding that the governor has prepared a report on his views after visiting violence-hit areas in the backdrop of the rural polls. On the polling day, the state governor had visited various places, mostly in North 24 Parganas district, and taken stock of the situation. Incidentally, the governor had visited places in the state where people were killed during incidents of clashes between political parties in the run-up to the polls. Earlier in the day, the Opposition BJP in West Bengal on Sunday claimed that the central forces were not deployed “deliberately” during the panchayat elections, inviting a sharp retort from the ruling TMC which said there was no guarantee that violence would not have happened if the forces were deployed. BJP national vice president Dilip Ghosh said if the central forces were deployed in sensitive places, there would not have been so much violence, and people could have exercised their franchise freely and without fear. With inputs from PTI