Alleging large scale “rigging, booth capturing and intimidation of voters” by the Trinamool Congress, the BJP on Saturday approached the Election Commission seeking countermanding of the poll held in the Dhaniakhali Assembly segment in entirety and conducting a repoll in the presence of Central Paramilitary Forces in every booth in the Assembly segment, falling under the Hooghly lok Sabha constituency.
Following the BJP’s complaint, the EC sought a report from the State Election Commission on 46 polling booths — including 26 in the Hooghly lS constituency. “Report on 11 polling booths in Birbhum and five in Howrah has also been sought,” sources said. Polling for Hooghly and eight other seats in West Bengal was held on April 30.
The BJP also sought action against Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi for his “provocative” statement in Solan (Himachal Pradesh) that 22,000 people will be killed in the country if Narendra Modi becomes the Prime Minister. The BJP termed the remark “uncalled for and a breach of the Model Code of Conduct”.
A delegation led by Ananth Kumar and comprising Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Chandan Mitra, the party’s candidate from Hooghly, met Chief Election Commissioner VS Sampath and submitted a memorandum with details of rigging and booth capturing.
“We brought to his (CEC’s) notice that in most of the booths in West Bengal there were neither CCTVs nor central forces. We urged the CEC that he should ensure better arrangements with CCTVs in all the sensitive booths in the ensuing two phases on May 7 and 12,” Kumar said, demanding repolling in those booths where voting was high.
In his memorandum to the CEC on Saturday, Mitra urged him to withhold the declaration of the result of the Hooghly lok Sabha seat pending fresh polls in Dhaniakhali. He pointed out that during his visit to a number of polling booths in Dhaniakhali on polling day, barring just two members of the West Bengal Armed Police and two Home Guards, there was not a single Central Paramilitary personnel present.
“To cite just one example of the stuffing of EVM machines, I refer to booth 111. Here 604 votes had been cast by 11 am out of the total of 961 eligible voters in that booth. This incredibly high percentage of polling within the first four hours of polling was achieved because members of the All-India Trinamool Congress arrived immediately as the booths were opened and people’s votes were forcibly cast at random,” Mitra stated, adding voting came down to a trickle thereafter.
He said the large presence of Trinamool workers, who are widely feared due to their reputation for indulging in wanton violence, was sufficient to keep genuine voters away. “Trinamool supporters had a field day and ensured their candidate established an unassailable margin over her competitors within the first three hours of polling,” he added. He also pointed out that other than Trinamool, there was no representative of the CPI(M), Congress and the BJP in the booths. There were, however, some others inside the booth but it turned out they were also Trinamool workers posing as the agents of Independent or other candidates, Mitra pointed out.
Mitra had earlier complained to the Hooghly returning officer too about the “organised terror by the State’s ruling party” and demanded that the polls in Dhaniakhali Assembly segment be countermanded.