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Election Comission has ordered that fresh voting will be held across all 285 polling stations in Falta assembly constituency of West Bengal on May 21 even as repolling was held in 15 booths in Paschim Magrahat and Diamond Harbour assembly constituencies on Saturday.
According to Election Commission, directives for fresh repolling have been given in Falta "on consideration of severe electoral offences and subversion of the democratic process during the polling in a large number of polling stations on April 29". The day saw political wrangling as a BJP delegation met with West Bengal Chief Electoral Officer Manoj Kumar Agarwal. TMC leader Kunal Ghosh visited the Netaji Indoor Stadium which has strong rooms with EVMs. BJP candidate from Maniktala Assembly Constituency, Tapas Roy, who was part of BJP's delegation to CEO, said the Election Commission's rules and regulations regarding the seating arrangements for national and state party representatives in the counting hall must be strictly followed. "We came with three issues. In Bardhaman, where people were climbing the building from the outside up to the fifth floor, what were the CAPF and the district police doing? Second, in Pingla and Daspur, casual workers are being deployed for duties they shouldn't be assigned to. This must stop. Third, the Election Commission's rules and regulations regarding the seating arrangements for national and state party representatives in the counting hall must be strictly followed. The Returning Officer (RO), Assistant Returning Officer (ARO), observers, and counting officers must ensure this," he said. "Because of incidents like what happened in Falta, Abhishek (Banerjee) won by a margin of 7 lakh 11 thousand votes in Diamond Harbour. Even today in Falta, things happen that shouldn't have. People were prevented from voting; in Hindu villages, our mothers and sisters had to come out and protest," he added. Kolkata Police Commissioner Ajay Kumar Nand also met with the West Bengal CEO at the Election Commission Office in the state capital. TMC leader and candidate from Belaghata assembly constituency, Kunal Ghosh, revisited the strong room at Netaji Indoor Stadium in Kolkata. "... We raised problems about movements inside the strong room without our representation. The Election Commission admitted the mistake and assured it would not happen again. Another issue was that the postal ballot strong room had no CCTV or live streaming screen outside. We pointed this out, and today, cameras have been installed. When movement occurred inside, our agent was present, and we could monitor it on the screen. Our workers are keeping watch round the clock," he said. South Kolkata DEO (District Election Officer), Randhir Kumar, assured that "whatever guidelines are there by the ECI (Election Commission of India), they are being followed." The repolling across the 15 polling booths in the South 24 Paraganas district concluded with a voter turnout of 90%. The repolling was mandated by the Election Commission of India (ECI) following reports of electronic voting machine (EVM) tampering and voter intimidation during the second phase of polling. Debashis Sen, former Chief Electoral Officer of West Bengal, called the election "violence-free". "The election was violence-free, and the best thing was that it was complaint-free. I'll give the Election Commission an A+ on this. I have a point regarding the SIR: 270,000 voters were unable to vote. They had no problem, but this is not right in a democracy. I'll give them a B-minus on this," he said. "I know the workings of EVMs very well, and I want to say that tampering with them is not that easy. There's a serial number, strong room arrangement, and there are numerous safeguards, and most importantly, the chip is written in machine language, making it impossible to tamper with it," he told ANI. He also talked about Supreme Court ruling on petition filed by Trinamool Congress. "Gyanesh Kumar's Election Commission suffered another big setback. The communication given by the additional chief electoral officer of West Bengal. The interpretation of that is that during the counting, only the central government and central PSU employees will be there, as the counting supervisor and the counting assistant. There will be no one from the state. We had challenged it in the Supreme Court. So ultimately, after hearing both parties, the Supreme Court made it very clear that not only central government employees but also state government employees will be there. So this is a big setback," he said. "BJP knows that it is going to lose badly. That is why they are trying to manipulate the counting till the very last moment. They are trying their best to manipulate the counting system. They know they are going to be defeated very, very badly, and Mamata Banerjee is going to have a huge victory on Monday (May 4). So they are trying to create irregularities and bias till the very last moment," he added. West Bengal BJP president Samik Bhattacharya slammed the TMC, claiming that the ruling party has conceded its defeat. "The TMC government is gone. Many people in West Bengal have never voted. They were not allowed to vote. In such an atmosphere, now that people have become fearless, they have voted. TMC has accepted the defeat, but still, because their workers go to the counting centres, they are giving such statements," Bhattacharya told ANI. Asserting that the people have rejected TMC, Bhattacharya said that the BJP will uncover the spending of TMC on "expensive lawyers." BJP MP Rahul Sinha also slammed TMC. "The people of the areas where repolling is happening have not been able to vote for years. This was because of TMC's 'gundabaazi.' After many years, the public got the freedom to vote. That's why they put all their fears aside, got out of their homes, and voted," he said. Exit poll numbers projected an interesting tussle in West Bengal, with the BJP ahead in most of the projections Votes will be counted on May 4 (ANI)
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