Days before the sixth phase of polling for the Lok Sabha election in West Bengal on May 25, reports of violence have poured in from Nandigram, where the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has claimed that several of their workers were attacked by Trinamool Congress (TMC) workers last night.
BJP on Thursday launched a protest march in Nandigram saying one of their workers, who was injured in the violence, had died and several others were hospitalised.
The TMC, however, denied any association with the violence and said it was internal rivalry among the BJP workers which led to the clashes.
Polling in Tamluk Lok Sabha constituency– which comprises seven Assembly segments including Tamluk, Panskura Purba, Nandakumar, Mahisadal, Moyna, Haldia-SC and Nandigram– is due on May 25.
The reports of violence came a day after TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee visited Nandigram–, the assembly constituency of the leader of the opposition Suvendu Adhikari–seeking vote for his party’s Tamluk candidate Debangshu Bhattacharya.
On Wednesday, addressing a rally there, Banerjee said that the BJP needs to be voted out of power so that the reservation rights of the people are protected. He said a change is imminent at the Centre and the TMC would play a crucial role in forming the new government.
Banerjee wondered what Suvendu Adhikari had delivered to the people of his seat. Calling Adhikari a “Gaddar” (traitor), he claimed the former TMC minister joined the BJP to evade ED and CBI scrutiny.
“Suvendu Adhikari cannot be the son of this pure soil of Medinipur. This is the soil of (freedom fighter) Satish Samanta and other revolutionaries,” he said.
Banerjee alleged that Adhikari won by fraud in the 2021 assembly elections with the help of a power outage during the counting of votes.
He said he knows that certain individuals did not allow people to vote in several areas of Nandigram during the 2021 assembly elections.
Warning them, he said, “The result of their action will not be good. They should be cautious. After Debangshu’s win, I will come to Nandigram within a month.”
Meanwhile, the Bengal police, over May 21-22, searched several in Purba and Paschim Medinipur connected to Adhikari and other BJP leaders. A local BJP leader was also arrested following raids, which sparked a major outrage.
The BJP has accused West Bengal Chief Minister and TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee of trying to intimidate its workers before the sixth phase of voting in the state.
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