Fearing electoral malpractices by the All India Trinamool Congress (AITC), the Opposition parties met Chief Electoral Officer of West Bengal Sunil Kumar Gupta here on Tuesday and urged him to ensure free and fair elections to two Assembly seats where by-polls are scheduled later this week.
A Left Front delegation led by Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leader and former Minister in the Left Front government Rekha Goswami met Mr. Gupta.
It apprehends that AITC cadres along with miscreants would enter the Basirhat Dakshin Assembly segment to intimidate voters.
“Most of the hotels and guest houses in the area have already been booked and they will be used by anti-socials during the polls,” Ms. Goswami told The Hindu .
The Left has demanded that the route marches of Central Armed Police Force (CAPF) should be conducted regularly and the Central forces should be properly deployed at sensitive booths.
At the meeting with Mr. Gupta, the Congress delegation, led by State president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, demanded the deployment of paramilitary forces at every booth in both the Basirhat Dakshin and Chowringhee Assembly constituencies.
The Congress delegation also demanded that the hotels in the Chowringhee constituency must be checked regularly, to make sure that miscreants were not sheltered there.
“In the Basirhat Dakshin constituency, the AITC is trying to create a reign of terror. The local police are threatening to slap false cases on Congress workers,” alleged Mr. Chowdhury.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) delegation, led by the its co-observer in the State, Siddharth Nath Singh, demanded the immediate transfer of the inspector-in-charge of Basirhat police station for not allowing a BJP rally in the area. Mr. Singh said that despite prior local police permission, the the meeting was stopped on Monday on the pretext that patients of a nearby hospital had complained of disturbance.
“The District Magistrate of North 24 Parganas Sanjay Bansal is biased. He should be transferred with immediate effect. The IC also needs to be suspended,” said Mr. Singh.
