“Now we have to go for elections because our Didi (chief minister, Mamata Banerjee) wants it to happen. The state Election Commission, nowadays, hardly matters in this regard. The state Election Commission is a toothless tiger that cannot disobey Didi,”
Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury (Photo: IANS)
The authorities should not hold crowd-centric events like elections, Gangasagar mela etc. at a time when the third wave of Covid-19 pandemic strikes hard, said Adhir Chowdhury, the leader of the Congress party in Parliament.
The polls – be the civic polls in Bengal or Assembly polls in other states – could be dispensed with considering the gravity of situation posed by the ongoing pandemic, said Chowdhury, the Congress MP from Behrampore, who is also the state Congress president.
“Now we have to go for elections because our Didi (chief minister, Mamata Banerjee) wants it to happen. The state Election Commission, nowadays, hardly matters in this regard. The state Election Commission is a toothless tiger that cannot disobey Didi,” the parliamentarian said. Even the Election Commission of India conducted elections at the cost of countless human lives lost during the earlier Covid waves in India, he said alleging that the ECI’s decision to hold elections amidst Covid surge was wrong. Election Commissioners, after all, are not health experts, the lawmaker remarked.
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People have sentiment associated with the religious congregation like Gangasagar mela, he said asking, “But do we really have necessary health infrastructure to take lakhs of pilgrims for RT-PCR test? Is social distancing maintainable in Gangasagar crowd?” The High Court passes an order on Covid compliance but the Bengal government does not enforce the HC order, the MP alleged.
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