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West Bengal: As fourth phase of campaign ends, EC comes under fire from political parties

The TMC had earlier asked the EC to "at least maintain an impartial face"

west-bengal-3phase-voting-salil West Bengal polls | Salil Bera

In the high-decibel fourth phase election campaigns that ended in West Bengal today, one consistent theme was the criticism of the Election Commission from parties like the CPI(M) and the TMC. While the TMC asked the EC to "at least maintain an impartial face" after a notice against CM Mamata Banerjee, CPI(M)'s West Bengal   secretary Surya Kanta Mishra questioned the party's impartiality. Mishra alleged at a press conference that despite the Sanjukta Morcha of the Left parties, Congress and the Indian Secular Front (ISF) lodging several complaints of electoral malpractices with the EC, none of them was addressed as the poll panel is only interested in "pleasing the TMC and the BJP".

The Trinamool Congress on Wednesday had hit out at the Election Commission over its notice to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, seeking to know what action the poll panel has taken on the complaints filed against the BJP. TMC spokesperson Mahua Moitra said the EC should "at least keep up the farce of impartiality". "Mamata di issued notice by @ECISVEEP on @BJPs complaint, What about TMC complaints of 1. Video evidence of BJP candidate distributing cash 2. Cash coupons distributed to attend BJP mtng & vote," she tweeted. 

The Election Commission had earlier issued a notice to Banerjee for her alleged appeal to Muslim voters while campaigning in Hooghly to not allow their votes get split among different political parties. Apart from Banerjee, the Election Commission had also issued a notice to Suvendu Adhikari, the BJP candidate from Nandigram in West Bengal, for alleged communal overtones. He has been asked to respond to the notice within 24 hours. The notice said the poll panel received a complaint from Kavita Krishnan of CPI-ML Central Committee in which it was alleged that on March 29 Adhikari delivered a "hate speech" in Nandigram while addressing a public meeting. 

Criticism from Assam Congress

The Assam Congress had accused the EC of acting "as per the instructions of the BJP" and raised questions about the safety of the EVMs. Party president Ripun Bora wrote a letter to the state Chief Electoral Officer Nitin Khade seeking access to CCTV feed from strong rooms to allay doubts about the security of EVMs kept there, and asserting that it will make the process more transparent. "After the second phase, when many issues relating to EVMs surfaced, the EC assured us that no such incident would happen in the third phase. But we are getting reports of people detecting EVMs being transported in unauthorised vehicles during the last phase of assembly polls yesterday. We thought EC would learn from its mistakes, but we were wrong. It proves that EC functions as per the instructions of the BJP. It is not neutral," Bora said at a press conference here.

The poll body should clarify under what circumstances the EVMs were being transported by election officials allegedly without security personnel at several places while voting for the third phase of assembly polls was underway on Tuesday, Bora said. Referring to an incident involving alleged shipment of truckload of EVMs from Tezpur to a strong room in Amingaon during 2019 Lok Sabha polls, Bora said, strong rooms can be manipulated by the BJP as "It is losing and now wants to win by any means".

-Inputs from PTI

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