Three-year-old Rajdeep kept sucking a mango seed for almost half an hour. There is nothing his mother can give the toddler except food to keep him occupied because the family has been taking shelter at Maheshwari Sadan in Kolkata for the past eight days. The child’s mother, Pallavi Mistri (24), a resident of Mullickpur gram panchayat under the Falta Assembly seat in West Bengal’s South 24 Parganas district, is a candidate for zilla parishad number 64, and had to leave her village after filing nomination papers on June 14.
Several candidates, including women who have filed nomination papers to contest the panchayat polls as Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidates, have taken shelter at Maheshwari Sadan in north Kolkata, just a hundred metres away from the State BJP headquarters at 6, Murlidhar Sen Lane.
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