Kolkata: Amid incidents of sporadic violence in the second phase of polling in Bengal, a news channel has claimed that Hindu voters were stopped from voting in Raiganj constituency.
News channel Times Now, quoting eye witness accounts, said some Muslim men stopped voters belonging to the Hindu religion from casting their votes and even took away their voter identity cards.
While some were stopped from proceeding towards polling booths, others claimed that bogus votes in their names had already been cast when they reached the polling station in the morning.
The village in question is a Muslim-dominated one, inhabited by around 600 Hindus. The channel claimed that the Hindus were inclined towards the ruling BJP at the Centre and were therefore prevented from voting by Trinamool Congress supporters.
One of the village residents said: “I was stopped from going to the polling booth. Four to five Muslim men tried to beat me and damage my bicycle. They said you are from the BJP and asked me to run away.”
The development came as the Bengal BJP approached the State Election Commission in Kolkata to lodge a complaint against the Trinamool Congress, regarding violence witnessed across different constituencies in the state in phase two of the Lok Sabha elections.
Earlier, the BJP’s Raiganj candidate, Debasree Chaudhuri, had alleged that Trinamool workers were indulging in booth capturing.
“TMC workers were trying to capture booths. They were campaigning among Muslims there. This isn’t an election campaign,” Debasree alleged, claiming that the ruling party workers tried to capture booths at Raiganj Coronation High School.
Also on Thursday, the convoy of CPI(M)’s Raiganj candidate Mohammed Salim was attacked by unidentified men in Islampur. It was reported that bullets were allegedly fired at his convoy, and bricks and stones were also hurled. The Left MP escaped the attack without injuries.
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