Voting rigged in thousands of booths; to move HC with evidence: BJP’s Suvendu

Kolkata: As repolling is in progress in nearly 700 booths for panchayat elections on Monday, the BJP accused the State Election Commission (SEC) of not giving importance to the “thousands of booths” where voting should have been conducted again.

Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari said he is collecting evidence of alleged malpractice in several thousands of booths during the polling on Saturday and, armed with these, will move the Calcutta High Court.

"We had submitted a list of 6,000 booths to the SEC recommending repoll. Actually, false voting had taken place in 18,000 booths at the behest of the Trinamool Congress. We are collecting more evidence... video footage and everything," Adhikari told reporters.

The West Bengal SEC has announced that repolling will be held in 696 booths across the state, where voting for the rural elections was declared void following reports of vote-tampering and violence.

"Our list has apparently been overlooked by SEC Rajiva Sinha and we are not surprised. The list of booths announced by SEC last night was submitted by the TMC," Adhikari said.

The Nandigram MLA claimed the pieces of evidence of malpractices that the BJP is collecting will prove the complicity of the TMC in the violence.

He said, "An exhaustively detailed evidence, backed up with ample video footage, will be submitted to the Calcutta High Court on Tuesday," the day of the counting of votes.

The BJP leader alleged that the direction of CCTV cameras was changed in the booths where largescale rigging took place.

To a question, Adhikari said, "The governor opened a peace room at Raj Bhavan. But I did not find the desired result. People want results from such moves." Governor CV Ananda Bose on June 18 opened the ‘peace room’ at Raj Bhavan “in view the numerous representations received from citizens on criminal intimidation in pre-poll Bengal.”