By-elections for the two Assembly constituencies in Bengal ended on Saturday amid complaints of sporadic violence between the workers of the ruling Trinamool Congress and the Opposition left and the BJP.
Elections were held for the Chowrunghee seat in central Kolkata and Basirhat Dakshin seat in North 24 Parganas. In both the segments the BJP had done exceptionally well in the recently concluded lok Sabha elections trailing to the Trinamool by a couple of thousand votes in the Kolkata seat whereas leaving the ruling outfit behind by a huge margin of 33,000 votes in Basirhat.
The Saturday’s violence that left about a dozen of people injured was the result of a panicky reaction of a frustrated Trinamool Congress which was anticipating defeat in the elections, BJP State president Rahul Sinha said.
Though the police and the Trinamool claimed peaceful polling miserably low voter turnout in Chowrunghee tended to say it all. While in lok Sabha elections the region had recorded more than 70 percent polling on Saturday just about 47.12 percent exercised their franchise even as the marauding Trinamool goons took control of a number of areas from Sealdah, Bentict Street, Fearce lane, Waterloo Street etal.
At least five CPI(M) supporters including two women were grievously injured in the attack led by Trinamool goons. All of them had been admitted to the Kolkata and NRS Medical Colleges with broken ribs and heads, police said.
At Bentick Street Trinamool BJP candidate Ritesh Tewari was heckled by Trinamool goons even as the BJP tried to stop bogus voting. OSD with the Chief Electoral Officer A Roychowdhury said the Commission had taken suo motu cognizance of the attacks and directed the police to take action.
“Six of our workers including two women were critically injured” CPI(M) candidate Faywaz Khan said adding “this was a planned attack going by the fact that one of the victims was the main complainant in the alleged custodial death case of SFI leader Sudipto Gupta.
A number of booths at Basirhat saw clashes between the Trinamool and the BJP men. “They are almost convinced that they are going to lose the seat so they have brought in outsiders who are staying in various hotels and are attacking our men even as the police are looking the other way,” Bhattacharya said. Basirhat witnessed about 79.80 percent polling some 7 percent less than previous occasion.