The BJP on Tuesday urged the Election Commission to bar West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee from campaigning in the State and alleged that “constitutional machinery” has collapsed there.
After violence and arson marred BJP president Amit Shah’s road show in Kolkata, a party delegation, including Union Ministers Nirmala Sitharaman and Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, rushed to the EC, seeking its immediate intervention to ensure free and fair polls in the State.
Naqvi accused Banerjee of “complicity” in violence allegedly aimed at the BJP, claiming that she has been “provoking” her Trinamool Congress workers to attack the saffron party’s functionaries.
“She holds a constitutional post but has been using unconstitutional comments, asking her party workers to take revenge and indulge in violence. She is complicit. She should be immediately barred from campaigning,” he told reporters after the BJP delegation met the EC.
The “goons” of the TMC have hijacked the state administration and the violence in Shah’s road show is an example of this, he claimed.
The credibility of the commission is at stake, he said, likening the situation in the State to Bihar in 2005 when the EC had sent a special representative to take control of the administration there to ensure free and fair polls.
The BJP also demanded that “miscreants” and “history-sheeters” present in the constituencies, which go to polls in the last phase of the Lok Sabha election on May 19, should be arrested and removed from these places.