HC to hear today pleas for central forces in civic polls

Kolkata: Calcutta High Court will hear on Wednesday two petitions seeking deployment of paramilitary forces for elections to 108 civic bodies scheduled for February 27.
Lawyer and CPM worker Senjuti Mukhopadhyay on Tuesday made an application to Chief Justice Prakash Shrivastava urging him to include her as an added party to the petitions of Pratap Banerjee and Mousumi Roy, stating how the State Election Commission failed to give her protection when she resisted some miscreants in front of a polling booth at EE Block in Bidhannagar.
The petitioner urged the court to summon the state election commission and explain incidents in Bidhannagar, and highlighted police inaction on the FIR she lodged after doing a medical examination.
While campaigning in Contai on Tuesday, BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari said: “We have prepared a list of 10,000-odd Bidhannagar voters who could not vote. These prominent citizens have been denied the right to vote. They will file PILs in the high court soon.”
BJP workers demonstrated in Asansol, Nadia, Bongaon and Barrackpore against “police failure”. Bengal BJP spokesperson Shamik Bhattacharya wanted SEC to scrap the Bidhannagar and Asansol civic polls.
The BJP petition alleged that SEC was acting in a “partisan manner” and no complaint to it was being redressed. The petition also complained that the “ruling dispensation is palpably violating the model code of conduct by undertaking new schemes even after the election dates were announced”.
Left Front wrote to the commission that outgoing councillors and ruling party’s local leaders would be participating in these events breaching the conduct code.