Allegations of rigging, false voting and deployment of fake polling agents in some booths, levelled against the ruling Trinamul Congress by the CPM, marring the Lok Sabha election in Diamond Harbour (DH) constituency in South 24-Parganas district on Saturday.
Abhishek Banerjee, Trinamul Congress national general secretary was fielded by the party again for the third time in a row since 2014 in DH, most prestigious out of the 42 LS seats in West Bengal, to take on two main rivals Pratik Ur Rahaman of CPM and Abhijit Das alias Bobby of BJP. Indian Secular Front (ISF) has fielded Manju Laskar.
Within a couple of hours after the polling started in DH from 7 a.m. today Prateek Ur caught red handed one Biswanath Naskar, local Trinamul Congress leader, who was allegedly pretending as a polling agent of the CPM candidate was sitting inside a booth at Aatkrishna Rampur.
Naskar somehow managed to flee the spot when he was challenged and caught on the spot by the CPM candidate.
“My authorized polling agent Somnath Bag was severely beaten up by Biswanath Naskar last night. Somnath was taken to a nearby hospital for treatment. Biswanath snatched Somnath’s agent slip issued by the Election Commission last night. Today, I found the Trinamul Congress goon Biswanath using Somnath’s agent slip and acted as my polling agent. He was sitting inside the Aatkrishna Rampur booth and conducting false voting,” Prateek Ur alleged.
‘My authorized polling agent Somnath was late in the booth this morning as he was taken to the hospital last night after being beaten up by Biswanath. Somnath showed me how Biswanath using his agent slip was organising false voting for Trinamul Congress. The presiding officer in charge of the booth was a silent spectator and didn’t take prompt action though I repeatedly sought her intervention on the matter. Later, the sector officer intervened to allow my polling agent to sit there,” the CPM candidate said.
“Our polling agent in booth 92 in the Sarisha area was beaten up and dragged out of the booth by Trinamul Congress men when he spotted how the CPM party symbol in the EVM machine was covered with black tape. He was taken to the DH government hospital for treatment. Thus, Abhishek Banerjee’s goons unleashed a reign of terror in different parts of DH constituency since yesterday by using his ‘Diamond Harbour’ model,” he alleged.
While speaking to reporters today, Abhishek claimed saying, “People are casting their votes in festival mood.”