BJP’s national secretary and the West Bengal observer of the party Kailash Vijayvargiya on Tuesday said the Trinamul Congress (TMC) would have lost in many seats had it allowed free and fair polling in the panchayat on Monday.

The party is now focusing on winning in Bengal Assembly poll after its victory in Karnataka, where it emerged as single largest party, winning 104 seats out of 222 seats.

Advertisement

“The TMC-led Bengal government looted votes with the help of police and miscreants. Unprecedented violence and bloodbath marred the poll. If people could cast their vote freely then TMC would have been ousted from the panchayat,” said Mr Vijayvargiya.

Meanwhile, the state BJP said despite widespread violence during panchayat poll on Monday by armed TMC activists, BJP supporters and activists defied the terror tactic and voted in different areas.

BJP state president Dilip Ghosh said it is good that people are trying to resist terror activities and the party will mobilise those people with renewed vigor to defeat the TMC in the next Assembly poll.

“In several places our party workers prevented attack on voters by TMC-backed goons. Police stood as mute spectators while miscreants created an atmosphere of terror during the election,” he said.

READ: Panchayat poll: Repoll in 572 booths, HC seeks documents on poll deaths

The state BJP prepared a report on violence in the panchayat poll which will be sent to Central leaderships especially to BJP national president Amit Shah to apprise him of the state’s current condition, where around 21 persons were killed on Monday’s panchayat poll violence.

However, Mr Ghosh is hopeful as BJP workers retaliated when they were attacked by TMC-backed goons in several places and said those party workers will strengthen the organisation more in coming days.

A large number of BJP members and nominees were attacked and severely injured by TMC-backed goons during the election and were admitted to hospitals, where condition of most of them deteriorated, general secretary of the state unit of BJP Debashree Chowdhury said.

She visited the injured in hospitals in Kolkata on Tuesday. The injured were shifted to Kolkata for better treatment on Tuesday.

She said the critical patients have been admitted to private hospitals and the others to government-run hospitals like Calcutta Medical College Hospital, NRS Medical College and Hospital and Chittaranjan National Medical College and Hospital. Such amount of violence during panchayat elections is scary, said Chowdhury.