Accusing the Trinamool Congress (TMC) of large scale electoral malpractices, the Left Front has declared a 12-hour strike in the Bidhanagar Municipal Corporation (BMC) area, housing Salt Lake city, on October 5.
“The 12-hour strike [6 a.m. to 6 p.m.] will take place in Salt Lake and the Rajarhat - Gopalpur area [in the North 24 Parganas district],” senior Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leader and the party’s North 24 Parganas district committee member Nepal Deb Bhattacharya told The Hindu . He also said that “TMC murdered democracy” in the Bidhannagar municipal polls.
The Left Front, that staged a protest demonstration outside the West Bengal State Election Commission (WBSEC) office, demanded that the polls be held afresh as the “rampant rigging and violence” by the Trinamool Congress (TMC) have made it a farce.
Meanwhile, the State leadership of the BJP held a sit-in outside State Election Commissioner S.R. Upadhyay’s room at the WBSEC office. State BJP president Rahul Sinha said that such “rampant booth capturing and rigging were unprecedented” in Bengal. As for their demand that the polls be held afresh, Mr. Sinha said that the Mr. Upadhyay told him that he will convey his decision in this regard to him.
Making similar demands, senior Congress leader Pradip Bhattacharya said he had urged Mr. Upadhyay to scrap the polls.
