As escalating violence threatening to haul rural Bengal to funeral ground — courtesy armed cadres of ruling Trinamool Congress — the BJP on Wednesday said it would move the Supreme Court with a prayer for central forces to conduct the panchayat elections.
In a simultaneous development that saw the State Eelection Commission virtually laying down arms over smooth conduct of elections against the backdrop of spiraling violence and bloodshed State BJP president Dilip Ghosh on Wednesday also demanded de-registration of Trinamool Congress as a parallel safeguard against undeterred violence perpetrated by its goons.
“There is no democracy in Bengal. When senior Opposition leaders are stabbed, beaten up in public and ruling party members are virtually taking control of the administrative offices stopping the BJP candidates from filing nomination and when the SEC expresses its inability to conduct free and fair polls then you have no other way but to rush to the Supeme Court,” Ghosh said adding the party had sent its team to Delhi and a petition could be filed any moment seeking central forces.
“While the State is burning Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is touring Delhi and other places to realise her prime ministerial dreams. Now question is being raised on her intention and ability to maintain law and order in Bengal,” he added.
In the wake of rising embers and a legal battle Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee decided to call off her visit to Chennai on April 10, whence she was scheduled to meet top DMK leadership for the purpose of an anti-BJP front. “The Chief Minister has postponed her visit to Chennai till the panchayat polls are over,” officials at State Secretariat Nabanna said.
In scathing attack on the ruling outfit Gosh said his party would make a representation before the Election Commission, “seeking de-registration of TMC as political party — that thrives by violence. The way one of our district secretaries was stabbed in one place and a district president was beaten up in another with wickets and many other leaders and candidates were attacked and their houses set on fire while the police looked the other way we have lost all faith in the State administration.”
A similar situation had erupted in 2013 when then SEC Meera Pandey had moved the High Court seeking central forces in the face of massive violence by the Trinamool Congress cadres.
The Trinamool on the other hand attacked Governor KN Tripathi saying Raj Bhavan was running like a BJP office. “The way decisions are being taken from the Raj Bhavan it seems that it has been rendered into a BJP office more than anything else,” State Minister Partho Chatterjee said before being summoned by Tripathi on Thursday.
Elsewhere in Delhi, a team of Trinamool MPs led by Sudip Bandopadhyay and Darek O’Brien on Wednesday met Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh “seeking his attention on the way the office of the Governor was conducting itself.”
Following a complaints of massive violence by the Opposition parties, the Governor had on Tuesday summoned senior Government officials including Chief Secretary Malay Kumar De and Home Secretary Atri Bhattacharya.