Violence continues in Bengal, several areas to vote again

The West Bengal state election commission (SEC) ordered repolling on Monday at 697 booths in 19 districts where voting for the rural elections has been declared void, a notification, seen by HT, said hours after a meeting of the commission on Sunday evening during which it took stock of vote-tampering and violence across the state.

- Pramod Giri and Sreyasi Pal

Among districts where repolling was announced, Murshidabad has the highest number of booths at 175, followed by Malda with 110. Violence-hit Nadia will see repolling in 89 booths, while North and South 24 Parganas districts will witness repolling in 46 and 36 booths, respectively.

Sporadic violence continued in several parts of north and south Bengal on Sunday, all political parties alleged a day after at least 18 people were killed during three-tier panchayat elections in 20 districts. A TMC worker who was injured in a bomb explosion at Sitalkuchi in Cooch Behar district on Saturday died on Sunday when he was being taken from a local hospital to Siliguri town, police said.

With this, the death toll in Saturday’s violence increased to 19, taking the number of deaths since June 9 to 38.

On Saturday, lives were lost in eight of 20 districts amid clashes, looting of ballot papers and alleged rigging. Darjeeling and Kalimpong were the only districts where polling was completely peaceful.

The violence continued on Sunday in Cooch Behar, North Dinajpur and South Dinajpur in the north Bengal region while clashes took place in Murshidabad, Malda, Howrah, South 24 Parganas and East Burdwan districts in south Bengal.