Rs 19 cr cash, over 8 lakh litres of liquor seized in Bengal ahead of polls, claims EC

Kolkata: The Election Commission has claimed to have seized over Rs 19 crore in cash from across the state so far, following the notification of the Lok Sabha elections.

Apart from the cash, around 8,24,414 litres of liquor have also been seized from various parts of the state, ahead of the elections. All the election machineries and officials belonging to various agencies are out on the streets to check the flow of unaccounted cash used by various political parties.

The Expenditure Observers are also closely monitoring the expenses incurred by various political parties and their candidates in the elections.

After the notification of the elections, the Election Commission has also mobilised various Central government agencies including Income Tax (I-T) and Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), to keep a tab on the dubious transactions and to check the use of unaccounted money during the elections.

A senior official at the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) in the state said that altogether 19.42 crore in cash and 8,24,414 litres of liquor have so far been seized from the state.

The commission is also monitoring to see if the cash was supposed to be used in the election by any political leader or candidate.

It may be mentioned here that states where the highest amount of cash and others materials have been seized include Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh.

Bengal is nowhere near these states, where transactions of huge amounts of unaccounted cash were detected after notification of the polls. Bengal also comes up at the bottom of the list when it comes to seizure of liquor and narcotic substances.

Incidentally, DRI has recently seized gold worth over Rs 7 crore smuggled into different parts of the city and its adjoining areas in the past few days. Acting on a tip-off, the DRI officials had raided various hotels in the city and seized the gold.

Meanwhile, the office of the CEO has received 3,528 complaints on the C-Vigil app till April 6, out of which around 3,503 complaints have so far been disposed of. The remaining 25 are pending and are yet to be resolved.

C-Vigil is a mobile application which the Election Commission of India (ECI) has been using for the first time in the Lok Sabha elections.

A press statement issued by the CEO's office says that the National Grievance Services Portal of the ECI has so far registered 1,412 complaints from the state, out of which 1,385 have been resolved with the remaining 27 in the process of disposal. The National Grievance Services Portal (Citizens) has received 1,643 complaints, out of which 1,611 have been disposed of.