Unhappy with the Election Commission’s response to the “widespread” violence in the last phases of polling in West Bengal, the four Left parties mounted protest action in various parts of the country on Wednesday in the hope of getting re-poll in some of the affected areas.
Addressing a protest meeting in the Capital, Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Prakash Karat alleged that workers of the ruling Trinamool Congress had rigged over 3,000 polling booths during the last three phases, held on April 30, May 7 and May 12. While many voters were assaulted at the booths, others never turned up to exercise their franchise after being threatened beforehand.
Though the Election Commission has ordered re-poll in some booths, the CPI(M) maintains that this covers a fraction of the exhaustive list of affected booths submitted by the party more than once over the past fortnight.
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In its last memorandum to the Commission on Monday, the CPI(M) expressed displeasure at its failure to respond adequately to the widespread “violence and mayhem” during polling in the State.
Terming it “unfortunate”, the party said the EC and its apparatus remained “mute spectators watching this mockery of democracy”. “Far from discharging its constitutional mandate of conducting a free and fair election, the EC apparatus remains a helpless bystander.”