Hooliganism will not be tolerated in front of West Bengal CEO office: Election Commission!

Amidst the election atmosphere in West Bengal, the Election Commission has taken a tough stand and has clearly said that any kind of hooliganism will not be tolerated at all outside the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO). The Commission has directly held TMC responsible in this matter.

This strict reaction of the Commission comes after the incidents that started on Tuesday night, which continued till Wednesday morning. In the first incident, there was a clash between TMC and BJP workers outside the CEO office in Kolkata.

In the second incident, Trinamool Congress workers staged a night-long protest alleging that the Election Commission and the CEO office were working in collusion with the BJP and people from other states were being included in the voter list of West Bengal.

A statement was issued by the CEO office on Wednesday morning. In this statement, not only the Trinamool Congress was held responsible for this chaos, but it was also made clear that these incidents will not affect the Commission’s resolve to conduct fair and free elections.

The statement said, “A councilor of Beleghata along with some anti-social elements were gheraoing the CEO office on Tuesday night and raising slogans. Such activities will not be tolerated at all and the law will take its course. The Commission will take all possible steps to conduct the upcoming two-phase assembly elections in a fair and peaceful manner.”

An official of the CEO office said that Section 144 is already in force here, under which gathering of large number of people is prohibited. Despite this, the ruling party workers demonstrated throughout the night.

On Tuesday night, West Bengal Chief Electoral Officer Manoj Kumar Aggarwal held a long meeting with Ajay Nand, in which the security of the CEO office was discussed. Later he also told the media that this kind of behavior would not be accepted outside the office.

Earlier on Tuesday evening, Manoj Kumar Aggarwal had rejected the allegations of Mamata Banerjee and Trinamool Congress that voters from other states were being added to the voter list of the state through Form-6.

In fact, this controversy increased further when Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee wrote a letter to Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar alleging that BJP agents were trying to include outsiders in the voter list of Bengal by submitting thousands of fake Form-6.