Kolkata: TMC leaders including party’s secretary general Partha Chatterjee, West Bengal Panchayat Minister Subrata Mukherjee and party’s president Subrata Bakshi visited Chief Electoral Officer Aariz Aftab, and requested to hold the bypoll at the earliest.
Talking to the media, Partha said that when the election was held then the Covid positivity rate in West Bengal was 33 per cent and now the situation is conducive for holding the bypoll in the state.
“Despite protest of the TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee the central government had held Assembly polls in eight phases and had increased the Covid positivity rate in the state and now since the rate has come down and we can hold the bypoll,” said Partha.
Notably, on Friday the Covid positive cases were 717.
Meanwhile, West Bengal BJP chief Dilip Ghosh said that just being afraid of losing the chief ministerial post Mamata Banerjee had asked her party people to visit Election Commissioner.
“We have also demanded municipality elections which are due for over a year but TMC is not conducting them. If they think that the condition is favourable for holding elections then they should conduct them first,” said Ghosh.
However, Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari had time and again claimed that the non-MLA chief Minister will have to resign from her post in November if the bypolls are not held on time.
It can be recalled that earlier last month the Chief Electoral Officer had written a letter to District Election Officers (DEO) and had asked them to conduct a first level checking of all the EVM and VVPAT machines which was supposed to be over by August 6.
It is pertinent to mention that the election of Murshidabad’s Jangipur and Samshergunj was cancelled earlier due to the death of the candidates by being affected by Covid. Later, Assembly seats of Dinhata, Khardaha, Shantipur, Gosaba and Bhawanipore also got added for the bypoll.
