Kolkata: TMC leader and West Bengal Panchayat Minister Subrata Mukherjee complained to the State Election Commission over the deployment of 294 companies of central forces during the second phase of polls. According to Mukherjee, the voters are afraid to see the central forces.
Coming out of the State Election Office (SEO), Mukherjee said that the more central forces will be deployed the chances of people being intimidated by them will be more.
“Common people of West Bengal are getting afraid to see a large number of central forces. They are not used to this. So I have asked the State Election Commissioner to look into this matter,” said Mukherjee.
Notably, the West Bengal BJP has time-and-again demanded high deployment of central forces from the Election Commission of India (ECI) in order to conduct ‘violence free’ election in all eight phases.
Incidentally, TMC leader and Women and Child Development and Social Welfare Minister Shashi Panja also visited the SEO urging the election commission to restrict the deployment of central forces from the BJP-ruled states.
“The Chief Ministers of all the BJP-ruled states are doing public rallies across West Bengal, and if forces from those states are brought then it might result in intimidation to the voters. They can influence the voters to vote for a particular political party,” claimed Panja.
TMC Rajya Sabha MP Derek O’Brien had written a letter to Chief Electoral Officer in West Bengal stating that BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari is ‘harboring criminals’ at five different locations in Nandigram and also mentioned that these people are non-voters of Nandigram.
Meanwhile, the West Bengal BJP has also written a letter to Election Commission about the murder of their cadre Akhil Biswas in North Dinajpur allegedly by TMC goons.
Notably, Special Police observer Vivek Dube submitted a letter to Election Commission that the death of another BJP cadre Amit Sarkar at Dinhata was suicide.
“After investigating it was found that the BJP cadre was not killed and had committed suicide. It was found that the cadre was mentally tired after being denied ticket to contest the polls,” said the report.