Repoll ordered in 36 booths

TT, Calcutta, April 26: The state election commission today ordered repolls in 36 of the 8,756 booths where civic polls were held yesterday.

The majority of the booths, where voting will be held between 7am and 3pm tomorrow, are in North 24-Parganas. Elections were held in 23 civic bodies of the district, from which the most number of complaints were reported.

Repolls were also ordered in Burdwan's Katwa, where a Trinamul worker died after being hit by a stray bullet yesterday.

Some of the booths in which repolls were ordered are in Basirhat, Titagarh, Bhatpara and Taki in North 24-Parganas, Sainthia and Rampurhat in Birbhum, and in Siliguri.

The central force distribution plan will be the same as yesterday in the respective districts.

Sources said the commission decided to order the repolls after an apparent intervention by the governor and the Opposition's sharp criticism of the panel's role during the Calcutta Municipal Corporation elections on April 18.

The commission had not ordered repolls for the CMC elections despite over 400 complaints of violence and malpractice being reported. The poll panel received 100 complaints yesterday.

"The commission was under a lot of pressure - from the governor and the Opposition, besides the media and a section of the bureaucracy.... Virtually everyone but the ruling party questioned the commission's role during the CMC elections," a poll panel official said today.

He added that commissioner S.R. Upadhaya had issued "strict" instructions to election officials to ensure better reporting of the ground reality in the districts, hours after he met the governor on Wednesday.

Upadhaya, however, declined comment when asked about the decision to order the repolls. "I got into a lot of unnecessary trouble for speaking my mind, which I did in my personal capacity. My office is being maligned and I will not tolerate it."

BJP MLA Samik Bhattacharya described the poll panel's move as "a mockery" of the party's complaints against alleged electoral "vitiation" by Trinamul. Left Front chairman Biman Bose said the combine did not expect anything better from the poll panel.

Trinamul secretary-general Partha Chatterjee said the commission had ordered repolls in the 36 booths because there were "technical glitches".