The death toll in election-related violence in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal rose to 18, as the state voted for village council members, according to local media reports.
Reports indicate widespread violence, booth capturing, and vandalism in several districts of the state in relation to elections for the councils, also known as panchayats.
The election commission was criticised for vio-lence as it opposed the idea of deploying additional forces for smooth conduct of polling. In a state where violence at the booth level is deeply seeped in the political culture, the election watchdog ought to have been much more competent and serious about its responsibility.
In the 2018 panchayat polls, 23 people died across Bengal, with 12 of them losing their lives on the day of polling.
The results are scheduled to be announced on July 11 but the Opposition, including the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the CPI (M) and the Congress, demanded a repoll at a large number of polling booths. The Congress moved the Calcutta high court seeking action against state election commissioner (SEC) Rajiva Sinha who was earlier pulled up by the court for not taking enough steps to stop pre-poll violence that claimed 19 lives between June 8 and July 7.0
“The TMC (Trinamool Congress) has killed democracy today. They have looted votes every-where. The TMC has already won the panchayat election,” state Congress president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, who is the Lok Sabha parliamentarian from Berhampore, said.
In 2013, two years after the TMC came to power for the first time, 15 people died during a multi-phase panchayat election.
Although the high court, while acting on a peti-tion filed by BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari, ordered on June 15 that the SEC must deploy 822 companies of central armed police forces (CAPF) across all 22 districts, only 649 companies reached the state on time, state police officials said.
Voters and opposition parties alleged that the CAPF were not deployed in sensitive areas on Saturday.
A Punjab Police contingent reached Kolkata after the elections were over since trains were running late, a state police officer said on condition of anonymity.
Among those who died on Saturday, at least 11 were supporters of the ruling TMC, even as officials indicated that some of those casualties were a result of internecine battles between Trinamool workers while in several instances clashes were reported between TMC men and those from other parties.—INP
