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, a senior BSF official said on July 9.
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.
The state declared only 4834 sensitive booths on which only CAPFs are deployed but actually, there were more sensitive polling booths, DIG Guleria said.
On July 9, at least 13 people were killed and several injured in violence reported across the state during the Panchayat poll. 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.
BSF informed that the State Election Commission has set up a total of 61,636 polling booths to conduct elections for 3317 Gram Panchayats, 341 Panchayat Samitis and 20 Zila Parishads in the state of West Bengal on July 13.
To ensure the safe conduct of the polls, 59,000 personnel of the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) and other state police forces have been given the responsibility for the security of polling booths across the state which also includes 4834 sensitive booths on which only CAPFs are deployed, they further informed.
After the completion of the polling process in the evening, all the ballot boxes were kept secured in the 339 strong rooms across the state and the responsibility to secure the strong rooms is given to Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF).
Coming down heavily on the Mamata Banerjee Government over the widespread violence during the panchayet elections in West Bengal, Union Minister Nishith Pramanik said the single-phased polls were not a festival of the republic but a festival of death.
Pramanik said the Trinamool Congress government will not even put out an accurate official count of deaths that took place acrosss the state since the date for the panchayat polls was notified. The BJP leader, who hails from North Bengal, said, “This (the deaths and electoral violence) should not have happened. Elections are a festival of the republic but this time, the panchayat elections in Bengal turned out to be a festival of death. The state government will not even come out with an official data on the number of people who lost their lives since the panchayat elections in Bengal were announced.”
He added that while political violence and clashes during elections were nothing new in Bengal, the scale of violence seen during the polling for the panchayats on Saturday was ‘unprecedented’.
“Several people lost their lives while many more are missing. We don’t know if those missing in light of the violence are even alive. The way the panchayat elections were conducted this year makes our heads hang in shame. The events today marks a firgettable chapter in the electoral history of West Bengal,” the Union minister said.
A person received fatal injuries after being hit by a crude explosive in the Phul Malancha polling booth in South 24 Pargana district. “The person is feared dead but the same hasn’t been confirmed by the doctors as yet. The crude bomb had struck the victim’s head. He was admitted to Basanti rural hospital (in the South 24 Parganas district),” Dibakar Das, the SDPO, said.
In another incident, BJP leader Ajoy Ray claimed that three fellow party workers were allegedly shot at by Trinamool Congress (TMC) workers in Cooch Behar’s Dinhata.
“From the morning our workers were not allowed to enter polling booths. They were beaten up at every place. One woman in the village received a bullet injury on her stomach while one of our workers also sustained a gunshot wound on his chest. There were instances of bombing and firing as well. Another man got hit by a bullet in his hand. The husband of one of our candidates was shoved to the ground and kicked around,” the BJP leader said.
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