Three people were killed and about a dozen injured on Monday in the second phase of Bengal panchayat elections. Otherwise “the polls were by far peaceful”, Bengal police claimed notwithstanding Opposition complaints of at least 350 cases of booth-capturing.
In a related development, the Calcutta High Court on Monday observed that there was lack of coordination and communication between the West Bengal Government and the State Election Commission on panchayat elections.
All the three deaths occurred in Burdwan district, an erstwhile left bastion, where Sheikh Hasmat, husband of Monowara Bibi, a CPI(M) candidate from Jamuria, was bombed to death allegedly by Trinamool workers.
In a retaliatory attack, a reported Trinamool worker Rajkumar Koda was lynched by the Marxist supporters, police said. Another TMC supporter Kata Mullick was killed at Mangalkote when alleged CPI(M) supporters hurled a bomb at him.
Reports of violence and booth-capturing and jamming of polling stations came in from various parts of the three districts Burdwan, Hooghly and East Midnapore that went to polls on Monday amid complaints that the central forces were kept largely idle by the respective district administrations despite instructions from the State Election Commission.
The second phase recorded around 75 per cent of polling. An SEC official said polling was taking long hours because vote was being cast on ballot papers and each voter had to cast three votes for gram panchayat, panchayat samiti and zilla parishad.
All eyes were set on the next round of polls as the people of both Singur and Nandigram were taking part in the elections.
Meanwhile, the Calcutta High Court on Monday once again pulled the State Government for failing to curb the motorbike rallies barred by the SEC during the election campaigns. The Commission on its part had acted upon complaints of the Opposition parties which said such rallies were staged to terrorise villagers.
Dealing an SEC petition on the issue the court had earlier banned motorbike rallies and asked the Chief and Home Secretaries to file an affidavit on the issue.
However, Advocate-General Bimal Chatterjee submitted that separate affidavits had been filed as per the court order stating, the Government had complied with the SEC’s instruction on force deployment.
He submitted that the State Government had already taken action, as per order, on movement of motorbikes in the poll-bound districts.
SEC counsel l C Bihani submitted that the state government had not intimated the SEC about this.
Justice Banerjee observed that there was a lack of coordination and communication between the State Government and the SEC.
Not satisfied with the reply of the AG, the Court reprimanded the Government for failing to curb such rallies and asked it to stop them at any cost.