"Everybody is quiet, no institution is responding. Do we expect the Chief Election Commissioner (Gyanesh Kumar) to respond...they are the ones who are fighting the elections of the BJP," alleged Kapil Sibal, an Independent Rajya Sabha MP and who represented the West Bengal Govt more than once in legal battle.
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The Murshidabad seat, which has 42.9 per cent Muslim population, went to the BJP in 2021.
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| Representational image: The Telegraph |
Referring to certain controversial statements of BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari and Home Minister Amit Shah, Sibal said the kind of speeches they are making is unbelievable.
"There is a woman (Mamata Benerjee) standing against you and you have put the entire strength of the country. This is a very dangerous thing for democracy".
He further alleged that the entire official strength of the country is being used to destabalise the environment in West Bengal.
"Where does the CEC gets these powers from....483 officers have been transferred. Nobody in this country has unlimited power," Sibal said.
"It is the CEC's vocation to make sure that the BJP somehow wins this election," he alleged.
Taking a dig at Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath for reportedly attributing a Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose's quote to Swami Vivekanand, Sibal said the UP CM has no idea about history and the Constitution as he only knows about bulldozers and other such things.
"In elections parties contest not the government. Here the government is fighting the election. 5,000 people from Gujarat are being taken to West Bengal in special trains.
Those who wanted to go home, were baton-charged, while a special train was run to take BJP people to West Bengal," the Independent Rajya Sabha MP alleged at a press conference.
If the Railways is taking BJP people to West Bengal then it is a straight forward model code of conduct violation, Sibal said.
"It is shocking. It seems that there is a state of emergency in West Bengal outside the Constitution of India.
In this emergency, 2,400 platoons of the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) have been placed there, which means 2.4 lakh CAPF personnel, which means for every 100 people, one CAPF personnel has been deployed," he said.
It seems, not the BJP, but the CAPF and the Election Commission, are fighting this election, Sibal said and alleged that this was "gross abuse of state machinery".
"These many CAPF personnel would not be there in Jammu and Kashmir. All this is happening, while violence is going on in Manipur. What is happening to our country?" the senior advocate said.
"Everybody is quiet, no institution is responding. Do we expect the Chief Election Commissioner (Gyanesh Kumar) to respond...they are the ones who are fighting the elections of the BJP," Sibal alleged.
West Bengal is set to vote in the first phase of the assembly elections on Thursday, amid an increasingly polarised battle.
The opening round of the two-phase election covers 152 of the state's 294 seats - including all 54 in north Bengal's eight districts and several in Murshidabad, Nadia, Birbhum and Hooghly.
The first phase could determine whether the BJP can still rely on north Bengal as its principal gateway to power or whether the Mamata Banerjee still holds grip.
The second phase of Bengal elections would take place on April 29 and the results would be declared on May 4.
In the second phase of polling for 142 seats, the BJP will have to do miracle. In 2021, the Lotus party had won only 18. Thus for Mamata, the trump card is still with the South Bengal 'bhadra-lok' voters.
In Murshidabad, Bankura, Purulia and East Midnapore, the fight between TMC and the BJP is expected to be tooth and nail.
Murshidabad, which has 22 Assembly seats, is probably the only district in Bengal where the contest is not bipolar.
Here, the Congress and the CPI-M still retain strong organisational presence and have a decent electoral track record, even though the past decade has been marked largely by the BJP’s rise.
In the 2024 Lok Sabha election, the Trinamool led in 14 of these 22 seats, the Congress in four.
BJP led in three and the CPI-M in one.
The vote shares of these parties was at 39.7 per cent, 23.4 per cent, 22.4 per cent and 10.1 per cent respectively.
In the 2021 Assembly polls, the Trinamool won 20 seats and the BJP won two in Murshidabad.
The TMC secured 54.5 per cent of the vote share, followed by the BJP with 23.1 per cent, the Congress with 14.2 per cent and the CPM with 4.8 per cent.
Murshidabad, with around 66 per cent of its population belonging to the minority community, has seen seats like Berhampore going to the BJP.
Berhampore has 25 per cent Muslim population.
The Murshidabad seat, which has 42.9 per cent Muslim population, went to the BJP in 2021.
Bhagabangola, Jalangi, and Domkal are constituencies where the CPM came second in 2021.
The special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls has complicated the equation. Post the SIR, over 60 lakh names were under adjudication in Bengal of which Murshidabad accounted for 11 lakh cases – around 20 per cent of the 55 lakh voters in the district.
Then there are seats like Samserganj, Lalgola, and Hariharpara, where the Congress came second in 2021, amid the BJP’s rise.
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Kapil Sibal is a paid lawyer of Mamata Banerjee. I do not like to antagonise the legal community but some unscrupulous persons have spoiled the legal system. Where is the justice? The popular adage says justice delayed is justice denied. For money they can do anything - S Dhar, Assam
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