BJP demands repolling in West Bengal’s Barrackpore following violence in constituency during polling

New Delhi : After BJP candidate from West Bengal’s Barrackpore, Arun Singh, claimed that he was attacked by Trinamool Congress (TMC) workers, Union minister Prakash Javadekar said the party wants a complete re-poll in the parliamentary constituency.

Saying that Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress is losing grip on the state, Javadekar alleged that the party is now resorting to rigging and violence to retain power in the state.

Earlier in the day, Barrackpore BJP candidate Arjun Singh said he was subjected to violence by TMC supporters. He said, “I was attacked by TMC goons who have been brought from outside. Those people were scaring away our voters. I am injured.”

However, local voters from the region said no such incident occurred in Barrackpore and that the voting process was fairly peaceful. They also accused the BJP candidate of blatantly lying.

While TMC is the clear favourite to win a maximum number of the state’s 42 seats, the BJP is giving Mamata Banerjee’s party a tough fight and expects firm its position in Bengal.

Seven seats in West Bengal — Barrackpore, Bongaon, Howrah, Uluberia, Hooghly, Arambagh and Sreerampur — went to polls in the fifth phase of the Lok Sabha elections 2019 and polling for 18 seats has already been conducted in the previous phases.

Polls are underway in as many as 51 Constituencies today in the fifth phase of Lok Sabha Elections spread across seven states including West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and Jammu and Kashmir. As per reports, over 8.75 crore voters will decide the fate of a total of 674 candidates in the fifth phase which is comparatively the smallest among the staggered seven-phase Lok Sabha polls in terms of the number of seats.