Kolkata: Panchayat poll violence has claimed three lives in West Bengal since Saturday even as Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee appealed for calm and claimed the disturbances could have been avoided had the elections been held in one or two phases.
Two Congress activists died in a bomb attack by supporters of a rival party in Beldanga, Murshidabad district, on Saturday night. Another Congress worker was killed in a political clash at Bharatpur in the same district yesterday, police said.
Two police personnel were injured while trying to separate the clashing groups at Bharatpur.
Murshidabad, along with Nadia, Malda and Birbhum districts, will go to the polls today in the fourth and penultimate phase of panchayat elections in the state. Eighty percent of the voting booths in the four districts have been declared sensitive.
Union minister and Murshidabad district Congress president Adhir Chowdhury termed the killings the handwork of miscreants who recently left the Communist Party of India-Marxist and joined the ruling Trinamool Congress. He also alleged that police had failed to act despite being tipped off in advance about the disturbances.
There were reports of violence from Nadia and Malda as well.
Speaking over phone to a local television channel, the chief minister put the onus for the violence on the opposition parties and the State Election Commission, and said the CPI-M, Congress, Bharatiya Janata Party — and even the courts, all preferred a lengthy, drawn-out five-phased election.
“No one listened to our logical and practical suggestion about a one-day, or at best a two-day poll.”
IANS
