Section of Central Forces intimidating voters: TMC

NEW DELHI: A delegation of the Trinamool Congress party led by its leader in Rajya Sabha Derek O'Brien and senior parliamentarian Sukhendu Sekhar Roy on Tuesday met Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora and complained that the Central forces deployed in the West Bengal were intimidating voters and civil servants in the state. They also demanded immediate intervention by the Election commission to hold a free and fair election in the state.

According to sources, the CEC gave them a patient hearing and promised to look into the allegations.

The TMC party delegation also alleged that in blatant defiance of the model code of conduct the Railway ministry had been issuing railway tickets bearing photograph of Prime Minister Narendra Modi along with some of the Central government's flagship programmes. They also gave the CEC ticket samples to back their claims. Last week, a delegation of Central ministers met the CEC and demanded all booths in Bengal be declared super sensitive.

The TMC leaders pointed that during the tenure of present Bengal government headed by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee there was no large scale violence or any mass murders as was the case during the tenure of the Left Front government in 2011. Even after that, all the booths were then not declared sensitive or hypersensitive. A petition also submitted by the TMC delegation on Tuesday to the EC said that during the Left Front government, extremism was at its peak in several districts like Purulia, Paschim Medinipur and Bankura. Now under the present state government, normalcy had returned to Darjeeling hill areas and political activities had resumed there.

The memorandum also said that earlier words like mob lynching, cow vigilantism, love jihad, Romeo squad were unheard of. These were now common terms in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar and other parts of the Hindi heartland. TMC leaders were of the view that the BJP was deliberately trying to divert attention to conceal their failure. They also expressed surprise over the demand of senior BJP ministers that the EC should form a media monitor group to oversee the day- to- day media reporting in the local media. This they pointed out was a way of muzzling media freedom in the state.

The TMC leaders made it clear that they had no objections to the deployment of paramilitary forces for the election but requested the CEC to ensure that they (the central forces) were not being used to intimidate voters at the behest of the BJP.