West Bengal: Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury meets family of victim of Panchayat poll violence, slams TMC

Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, the president of the West Bengal Pradesh Congress, criticised the Trinamool Congress on Sunday for the fatalities in separate acts of violence that marred the state’s panchayat elections on Saturday. The Congress politician questioned the TMC’s role in the ‘failure’ to provide a smooth electoral process during the West Bengal panchayat elections while speaking to the media. “How many more people will be killed?” he asked. “A 62-year-old man was murdered here yesterday. How many more people will be killed? There was violence before the polls and also after it. We will agitate and also go to court against this murder,” Adhir Ranjan said. He also met the family members of 62-year-old party worker Haji Liaquat Ali, who was allegedly killed in the violence. A total of 10 people were killed and several injured in violence reported across the state during the Panchayat poll. The three-tier panchayat elections in 20 districts were marked by widespread violence, looting of ballots papers and rigging. There were reports of booth capturing, damaging of ballot boxes and assault of presiding officers from several districts such as Murshidabad, Cooch Behar, Malda, South 24 Parganas, North Dinajpur and Nadia. Earlier on Saturday, he said that the TMC’s incoherence with the police administration has unleashed a reign of terror in an unprecedented way. “The ruling party’s incoherence with the police administrations…has unleashed a reign of terror in an unprecedented way, which has taken a toll on 26 people, and hundreds of people who are fatally injured have been admitted to the hospital already. The political and electoral environment in Bengal has been violent…It is a travesty of panchayat elections and virtually it is an example of electoral depredations…,” said Adhir Ranjan Chowdhary. However, the state election commission came under fire with the parties of the state alleging of booth capturing and rigging across the state. The Border Security Force (BSF) also came down heavily on the poll body of the state and said that despite repeated requests from the Border Security Force (BSF) on sensitive polling booths, the West Bengal State Election Commission didn’t provide any information on such booths to the central security forces. SS Guleria, DIG BSF said that BSF has written several letters to the state election commission seeking information on sensitive polling booths but no information was provided except on June 7, when they were informed of just the numbers of such booths but nothing about their location or any other information. He added that the deployment of BSF was at the behest of local administration. “There were 59,000 troops of Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) and state armed police arrived from 25 states for election duty but they were not adequately utilised on sensitive polling booths,” he said. Polling began at 7 am amid tight security in the state in 73,887 seats in rural areas of West Bengal with 5.67 crore people deciding the fate of around 2.06 lakh candidates. (With agency inputs)