“If there is no false voting here, why are you threatening my agent? ” Bharatiya Janata Party candidate Roopa Ganguly asks a group of Trinamool Congress supporters, who allegedly threatened the BJP agent at a polling booth at Sree Krishna Sevashram Prathamik Vidyalaya in Howrah Uttar constituency on Monday.
Since polling started in the morning, the 49-year old actor-turned-politician has been visiting booths in the densely populated constituency on the banks of the Hooghly.
“The polling agent here needs to removed,” Ms. Ganguly told her party agent at Sri Aurobindo High School in Bamangachi area. She refused to be cowed down by TMC supporters when they questioned her presence in the “TMC area.”
She also got into an argument with TMC's Deputy Mayor of the Howrah Municipal Corporation Minoti Adhikari, who is working as an election agent of an independent candidate. "She is serving as an agent of a dummy TMC candidate," Ms.Ganguly alleged.
“The polling officer here is drunk. He is purposefully delaying the polling process,” she said adding, “We had heard that the polling irregularities start in the afternoon but here it has started from 8 a.m. itself.”
TMC candidate lodges a complaint against Ms. Ganguly
The Trinamool candidate from the same constituency, former cricketer Lakshmi Ratan Shukla, has lodged a complaint against Ms.Ganguly for allegedly threatening the presiding officer of polling booths. The Election Commission has directed that her activities be monitored.