Candidates accommodated in the official list communicated by Trinamul Congress Bhawan have been denied symbols and the Independents offered the status as official candidates.

This move has annoyed the block TMC leadership in Raina- 2 here and the local leadership has threatened to withdraw the entire list of candidates as a mark of protest and stay away from the poll process. It is in Raina, incidentally, where two gram panchayat seats have already gone in favour of the CPM, uncontested.

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Trouble started in Raina2 when the TMC leadership found that the party symbols were distributed to the rebel Independent candidates, depriving the candidates accommodated in the official list. About 50 per cent of the seats in Raina-2 block have witnessed such a gross mismatch, the party though had warned the rebels to withdraw papers to avoid harsh penal measures.

Asim Pal, block president of TMC in Raina-2 said, “But, here we’ve seen a reverse scene. It’s ridiculous to see that our MLA was giving approval to the rebels, denying symbols to the party-nominated official candidates. It’s hard to digest.” Raina MLA Shampa Dhara, who also served as the sabhadhipati of the East Burdwan zilla parishad, allegedly picked up certain candidates of the block of her choice and nominated them with symbols.

Pal and block youth TMC president Zulfikar Ali alleged: “The MLA has given symbol to the FIR-named murderers of previous block president Sheikh Abdul Ali and deprived Ali’s widow, who’s in the official list. So, we chose to stay away from the entire election process.” MLA Dhara said, “Ali’s widow is working as an employee of an organization.

She’ll have to lose her job, as per the rules, if we nominate her. There are certain reasons why we’d altered some names.”