Trinamul Congress Criticizes Seven-Phase Polls in Bengal, Alleges BJP Advantage

The Trinamul Congress blasted the Election Commission of India (ECI) on Saturday for failing to take into account its desire for the voting to take place all at once and said that the BJP, which has greater financial resources, will benefit from the seven phases of the votes in Bengal.

In Bengal, a seven-phase election is not necessary. State Finance Minister Chandrima Bhattacharyya stated at a news conference in Calcutta that "parties with greater financial strength, like the BJP, will get time to mobilize their strength and money to the greatest extent if the elections are conducted in several phases."

Trinamul leaders had asked for the polls to be held in one or two phases during a meeting earlier this month with the whole bench of the ECI.

"We requested that the election be held in one or two phases, but our request was ignored. "State INTTUC president Ritabrata Banerjee, who accompanied Bhattacharyya at the news conference, stated that while Bengal has elections in seven phases, large states like Tamil Nadu, which has 39 seats, Gujarat, which has 26 seats, Andhra Pradesh, which has 25 seats, or Kerala, which has 20 seats, have elections in a single phase."

In addition, Trinamul asserted that the decision to hold the elections in seven phases was an assault on the federal system because it disregarded the demands of the state governments.

This shows a disrespect for the federal government. The opinions of the state government were ignored. "We find it surprising that seven phases of polling were required in Bengal," Sukhendu Sekhar Roy, a member of the Trinamul Rajya Sabha, stated.

Concerns were also made by the ruling regime regarding Prime Minister Narendra Modi's hasty appointment of the two poll commissioners, just after one of the previous commissioners resigned.

"The ECI is not being criticized by us. The PM pretended to be the captain of a cricket team, selecting his own match official. We denounce this. We witnessed Chandigarh's vote-rigging during the mayoral race. But after the Supreme Court's ruling on the matter, things changed," said Bhattacharya, who is also the Trinamul Mahila Congress president.

The commission's ruling was applauded by the BJP. "We had assumed there would be eight steps to the polling process. But we applaud the Election Commission's ruling," BJP state president Sukanta Majumdar stated.

Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, the state president of Congress, praised the seven-phase polling as well and requested that the commission send out central forces as soon as feasible.

Trinamul desired a one-phase election because they could steal the votes in a couple of days. Instead of deploying central forces one or two days prior to the polls, I would ask the Election Commission to do so considerably earlier," Chowdhury stated.

Beyond cash and force, the ECI should guarantee free and fair elections, according to CPM state secretary Md. Salim.

In an effort to put an end to violence and corruption in the state, Governor C.V. Ananda Bose declared on Saturday that he will be actively participating in the next general election.

Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by Press Time staff and has been published from a syndicated feed.