For the first time, invoking Article 324 of the Constitution, which gives it powers of “superintendence, direction and control of elections,” the Election Commission has cut short the campaign for the last round of voting in Bengal.
Now, campaigning for the nine seats in Bengal, which will vote on May 19, will end on Thursday night at 10 pm, a day early. Otherwise, it would have ended at 5 pm on Friday. The Election Commission also ordered the removal of two senior officers — Principal Secretary (Home) and Additional Director General, CID (Criminal Investigation department).
“This is probably the first time that the EC has invoked Article 324 in this manner but it may not be the last in cases of repetition of lawlessness and violence, which vitiate the conduct of polls in a peaceful manner,” Deputy Election Commissioner Chandra Bhushan Kumar said at a press conference in New Delhi.
In Bengal, the Trinamool and the BJP are locked in a frantic tussle for 42 Lok Sabha seats; the nine constituencies affected by the ban are Dum Dum, Barasat, Basirhat, Jaynagar, Mathurapur, Jadavpur, Diamond Harbour, South and North Kolkata, which are scheduled to go to polls in the last phase on May 19.
Mamata has now rescheduled all her rallies that were supposed to be held on May 17 to May 16. At a press conference on Wednesday, BJP president Amit Shah asserted that the EC was behaving like “a mute spectator” when TMC cadre were engaging in violence.
Shortly after the violence, all top TMC leaders changed their Twitter display pictures to that of social reformer Vidyasagar – whose bust was vandalised –in order to internalise the hurt among the Bengali community. Shah claimed that Mamata Banerjee was engaging in acts of vandalism as she could foresee an impending poll defeat for herself. He claimed that the BJP would win at least 23 seats in the state and cross over the 300-seat mark.
Inputs from Freepressjournal