Bengal LoP writes to CEC, complains against Bengal CM of indirectly 'threatening' BLOs

Kolkata, July 29 (IANS) The Leader of Opposition (LoP) in West Bengal Assembly, Suvendu Adhikari, on Tuesday, wrote a letter to the Chief Election Commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar requesting the latter to take suo motu action against Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for allegedly making unauthorised attempts to interfere in the electoral process by “intimidation and maliciously influencing the booth level officers (BLOs)” in the state.

In his letter, the LoP has referred to an administrative meeting addressed by the Chief Minister at Birbhum district on Monday, where she accused the Election Commission of India (ECI) of beginning the process of training the booth-level officers (BLOs) in the state without giving prior intimation to the state government.

During her address, the Chief Minister also issued a subtle note of caution, reminding that those BLOs were state government employees at the end of the day.

"The authority of the Election Commission of India starts only after the election dates are announced and not before that. Do not forget that you are all state government employees. You will have to ensure that the name of a single genuine voter is not deleted from the voters' list. Everywhere, Bengali-speaking people are harassed. We must stand by them," the Chief Minister said.

In his letter to the Chief Election Commissioner, Adhikari had pointed out that the Chief Minister assertion that BLOs were merely state government employees and her attempt to intimidate and manipulate the electoral process by instructing BLOs to ensure that no names are removed from the voters’ list, was an unauthorised attempt to dilute the voters’ lists for political gain.

Adhikari had also raised the question of how the elections in West Bengal were fair, with the Chief Minister pressurising the electoral officials and challenging the autonomy of the Election Commission of India. “It is a direct attack on our democracy,” he added.

Meanwhile, BJP’s Information Technology Cell Chief and the party’s central observer for West Bengal, Amit Malviya too had issued a statement where he claimed that Mamata Banerjee’s threatening the BLOs and asking them to defy the instructions of the Election Commission of India, a constitutional body, was a yet another step towards her ploy to openly playing into the hands of anti-India foreign agents and working to destabilize the nation from within.

Malviya said that challenging the authority of the Commission was not just a political misstep but also a direct attack on India’s democratic institutions and national security.

--IANS

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