Mishra faces public backlash, gheraoed in five places

‘Surya Kanta go back’ was the slogan that hundreds of villagers shouted as soon as Dr Surya Kanta Mishra, the state CPI(M) secretary and the party’s candidate from Narayangarh Assembly seat, got down from his vehicle to reach a polling station to keep a tab on the election progress on Monday.

Dr Mishra was repeatedly gheraoed at five different places in Naraygarh. Mishra had won the seat in Assembly election in 2011 by 7,109 votes. It will be tough fight for him to retain the seat because Trinamool Congress was ahead from this Assembly constituency in 2014 Lok Sabha polls by 2,6395 votes and Congress had bagged 4,097 votes. On Monday, Dr Mishra was found moving around with a list of sensitive booths from where Left Front had previously performed well in the elections. Nothing went right with Dr Mishra as he was stopped from entering a booth by a Central Force jawan. The jawan didn’t notice the identity card of Dr Mishra and restricted him at booth number 258 in Radhanagar Adarsha Primary School. The situation turned worse when he started hopping from one booth to another. Local people gheraoed Dr Mishra outside booth number 16 at Harirampur claiming that the CPI(M) candidate was entering the booths to delay the election process. His security guards were found standing as mere spectators when villagers including many women shouted slogans against Dr Mishra. The villagers claimed that “He (Dr Mishra) never came to ask about their condition in the past five years despite winning from the seat and on Monday he came to gain mileage during the election. Moreover, no development has taken place in the area because of his apathy. After ignoring his duties, why he is moving around the place to disturb the election process?” The situation was quite similar when he went to polling stations at Nandakishorpur and Baki Bazar area. In Nandakishorepur, people were found shouting slogans ‘Surya Kanta go back’. Hundreds of people gathered soon after he was gheraoed by a few villagers. Failing to give any answers to their questions, Dr Mishra was found standing speechlessly amidst the crowd. Jawans of the Central Force and policemen cleared the mob and helped him to come out of the place. The situation went out of control at Baki Bazar where the central force jawans and police had to resort to lathicharge to disperse the mob that had gheraoed Dr Mishra.