A group of unidentified miscreants set fire to Bharatiya Janata Party’s office in Siliguri’s Dagram in West Bengal late Thursday night. However, there is no information about anyone getting injured in this accident. This comes as the latest incident of violence in the state, which is scheduled to witness Panchayat elections on July 8. While talking to reporters on this, West Bengal Leader of Opposition (LoP) Suvendu Adhikari said this violence will not stop until Mamata Banerjee is in power and the solution is not to vote for TMC and Mamata, as reported by news agency ANI.
The incident took place just a few days after, the Calcutta High Court on Wednesday (June 21) ordered a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into incidents of violence that erupted over the filing of nominations for West Bengal panchayat polls.
Justice Amrita Sinha has ordered the CBI to submit the probe report by July 7, a day before the voting for the panchayat elections.
The case came up for hearing after the Left Front approached the Calcutta High Court, alleging that the names of their candidates did not feature on the list uploaded to the State Election Commission's website.
The court ordered the SEC to include the names of the candidates on the list. Justice Sinha also slammed the clashes before the polls and said that the widespread violence in the run-up to the elections should not be happening.
The high court also heard allegations relating to document tampering that enabled two candidates in two Uluberia blocks to bypass the scrutiny process. The BDO of the area, however, refused to entertain a complaint in this regard.
Since the BDO is a state government employee, the CBI has been asked to investigate the matter. "It would not be appropriate to entrust the burden of this inquiry to the state," the court said. Bengal, which is no stranger to poll-related violence, has been witnessing a series of clashes in various districts.
Opposition parties in Bengal have alleged that their candidates and supporters faced violence and intimidation by Trinamool Congress activists, while the ruling party has blamed the opposition for clashes at different places in the state during nomination filing and withdrawal of candidature period, which ended last Tuesday.
Elections will be held for nearly 75,000 seats in the three-tier Panchayati Raj system on July 8.