The West Bengal State Election Commission, (SEC) in an affidavit before the Calcutta High Court, has said that the number of withdrawals of nomination papers in the ensuing panchayat elections has been less than the 2018 panchayat polls.
According to the affidavit filed, the Commission said that while 17.66% nominations were withdrawn in the 2018 panchayat polls, the number of nominations taken back during the ongoing polls was 9.03%.
During this year, the SEC received 1,33,633 nominations out of which 20,612 nominations were withdrawn which comes to 9.03% of all the nominations filed by the candidates. In the year 2018, the Commission received 2,28,158 valid nominations of which a total of 23,619 nominations were withdrawn, taking the figure of nomination to 17.66%.
The Opposition parties have alleged that their candidates were pressurised to withdraw the nomination papers. The counsel appearing for the Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari had alleged that 20,585 nominations were withdrawn by the candidates, and the Calcutta High Court had asked the Commission to file a report on the issue.
Unfair argument
Commenting on the development, senior advocate and CPI(M) Rajya Sabha MP Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya said that a constitutional body that was mandated to hold free and fair polls, could not give such arguments that atrocities in these elections were less than the previous one. The 2018 panchayat elections had witnessed large-scale violence and about 34% of the seats at the three-tier polls were won by the Trinamool Congress without any contest. Many political observers felt that the impact of the violence in the panchayat polls was witnessed in the 2019 general elections when the BJP won 18 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats. Preliminary estimates suggested that so far, 12% of the seats had been won uncontested by the Trinamool Congress in the ongoing process.
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Voting on July 8
In another development, a BJP booth president was found dead at Sabang in Paschim Medinipur under mysterious circumstances. Dipak Samanta was found hanging and his family members alleged that he was killed and then hung. The family said that a white envelope, threatening him not to participate in the panchayat polls, was also sent to the family. So far, 11 persons have been killed in the violence relating to the rural polls since the notification of the panchayat polls was issued on June 8.
Meanwhile, Governor C.V. Ananda Bose, who was visiting north Bengal, issued a strong statement saying that the “death knell of democracy” should not ring in the hands of its custodian. “The death knell of democracy must not ring in the hands of its custodian. We must take care of that,” the Governor said, adding that he would continue visiting the areas witnessing violence to have first-hand knowledge of what was happening on the ground. Voting for 73,000 seats at the three-tier panchayats will be held on July 8.
