West Bengal Panchayat polls: Amid allegations of rigging, counting of votes to take place tomorrow

Kolkata (West Bengal) [India], July 10 (ANI): The counting of votes for the high-stake West Bengal panchayat election will begin on Tuesday at 8 am, a litmus test for Mamata Banerjee and BJP ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
The voting process concluded on Monday after the state election commission (SEC) mandated a re-polling due to reports of violence at multiple polling stations on the first day. Re-election took place at 696 stations across 19 districts, following the nullification of Saturday's polling in these areas.
The decision to re-polling was prompted by allegations of ballot box tampering and the occurrence of violence, which tragically resulted in the loss of at least 19 lives.
At first, votes for the Gram Panchayats will be counted, followed by the Zilla Samitis and then the Zilla Parishads. All the counting centres will have an adequate deployment of central forces which will be monitored by CCTV cameras.
West Bengal Governor CV Ananda Bose, who had been conducting visits to districts affected by pre-poll violence, met with Union Home Minister Amit Shah in New Delhi today. After the meeting, the Governor expressed optimism, stating that there will be light at the end of the tunnel and that good things will happen in the future.
"The darkest hour is just before dawn. There will be light at the end of the tunnel. The only message I could get today is -if winter comes can spring be far behind? Good will happen in the days to come," said West Bengal Governor after his meeting with Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
The BJP accused the State Election Commission (SEC) of not giving order for re-polling to the "thousands of booths" where voting should have been conducted again.
Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari said he will move Calcutta High Court and will present evidence collected by his party of alleged malpractice in several thousands of booths during the polling on Saturday.
The West Bengal SEC has announced that repolling will be held in 696 booths across the state, where voting for the rural elections was declared void following reports of vote-tampering and violence.
The panchayat elections were held on July 8 under tight security, with approximately 5.67 crore voters participating and deciding the fate of 2.06 lakh candidates vying for 73,887 seats in rural areas of West Bengal.
However, the voting day was marred with widespread violence, looting of ballots papers and rigging. There were reports of booth capturing, damaging of ballot boxes and assault of presiding officers from several districts such as Murshidabad, Cooch Behar, Malda, South 24 Parganas, North Dinajpur and Nadia.
Reports also emerged of ballot boxes being set on fire and clashes between political parties in different locations.
As a result, re-polling was conducted in 697 booths across 22 Zilla Parishads, 9,730 Panchayat Samitis, and 63,239 Gram Panchayat seats in 19 districts of the state. The re-polling process was conducted under the supervision of Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) without any reports of violence.
The State Election Commission officially announced the date for the re-polls and directed the District Panchayat Election Officer to set up the polling stations accordingly.
During the initial polling, security forces from the Centre and the state were deployed at all 61,636 polling booths to ensure a fair, safe, and impartial election. A significant number of Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) and State Armed Police (SAP) personnel were deployed at sensitive booths, while the rest were assigned security duties along with local state police.
In another incident, a ballot box at a polling booth in Baranachina of Dinhata in Cooch Behar district was set on fire allegedly by voters who were angry with bogus voting that was reportedly going on there.
Another incident was reported from Balutola in Gopalpur Panchayat of Malda where a clash broke out between Congress and TMC workers and bombs were hurled while the polling booth at Baravita Primary School in Sitai of Coochbehar also vandalised and ballot papers were set on fire.
Several other incidents of ballot box and ballot paper looting and destruction were reported from numerous polling booths in the State.
Speaking about the repolls, a senior CAPF officer said, "There were more than 14,000 sensitive polling booths but the state administration just mentioned about 4000 such booths that lead to violence at many places on Sunday. The deployment of CAPF was also not done appropriately."
"The situation is completely different during re-polling as CAPF is deployed at all 696 polling booths and there is no information of violence from anywhere till 1 pm," he added.
Senior officers monitored the situation from control rooms through CCTVs and taking regular updates from each polling booth, informed another CAPF officer. "We have deployed six-seven CAPF personnel at polling booths where violence had occurred and re-polling has been ordered," the officer said.
In 2018, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) won uncontested, 34 per cent of the seats in panchayat elections, which also saw various instances of violence.
(ANI)