Mamata moves Calcutta High Court challenging Nandigram election results

Kolkata: Trinamool Congress chairperson Mamata Banerjee filed an election petition at the Calcutta High Court challenging the result of the Nandigram Assembly constituency in which she lost to BJP's Suvendu Adhikari by a slender margin. The case is set to be heard by the Bench of Justice Kaushik Chandra on Friday.

Banerjee, who had contested as a Trinamool Congress candidate from Nandigram, was first declared elected by a margin of 1,200 votes. Later the result was reversed in favour of Adhikari stating that he won by a margin of 1,956 votes.

In this connection, Banerjee had earlier said that the Election Commission had announced her as the winning candidate. The Governor had also congratulated her and all of a sudden she was declared as the losing candidate. She was also quite surprised with the election result of Nandigram when her party did so well across the state. She had alleged that there was a problem with the server followed by a power cut at the counting centre on the day of counting. There was no link to the server for long hours and there was a complete blackout.

"They had done some sort of mischief with the EVMs," she had alleged. She had demanded that the EMVs, VVPATS and the postal ballots of Nandigram be kept separately.

The Trinamool Congress, shortly after the result was out, alleged that senior polling personnel had been silenced at gunpoint. As no recounting was allowed despite repeated requests from the Trinamool Congress, Banerjee had made an SMS message public in which a polling officer was found to state that he had to keep quiet as he was threatened with dire consequences.

The SMS written by the Returning Officer read: "If I allow recounting, then I will be killed. I am under tremendous pressure from Delhi and BJP. I have a daughter. The pressure is mounting and I will have no option but to commit suicide."

Banerjee is continuing as the Chief Minister for the third consecutive term with her party gaining a landslide victory. But she needs to get elected within six months to continue as the Chief Minister for losing by a small margin from Nandigram. In such a situation, former External Affairs minister Yashwant Sinha made a sensational claim revealing that the Election Commission has planned not to hold any elections for the next few months just to restrict her from entering the state Assembly.