The fact-finding team from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) investigating the election violence in West Bengal arrived in Cooch Behar, North Bengal, on Friday. The BJP established a fact-finding team of five people, including party MP Ravi Shankar Prasad, who will travel to Dinhata in Coochbehar and other violent areas of the state. On Wednesday, BJP MP Ravi Shankar Prasad and the fact-finding team he organized arrived in Kolkata. After visiting the areas affected by the violence and speaking with the victims, Prasad said, “we will submit our report to party president JP Nadda.” On Wednesday, West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee said that the fact-finding team led by BJP MP Ravi Shankar Prasad is BJP’s provocation committee. She asked, “Where were these teams and committees when Manipur was burning and thousands of people were murdered in Uttar Pradesh in the name of the encounter?”
She said that none of the teams have visited these places, but in the past two years, 154 teams have visited Bengal.
Earlier on Tuesday, the BJP constituted a five-member fact-finding committee in the wake of the widespread violence during the Panchayat elections in the state.
Ravi Shankar Prasad said, “Why should more than 40 people lose their lives in the gram panchayat election? Why the so-called colleagues who are trying to forge an alliance against Narendra Modi are maintaining a conspicuous silence? We will visit and submit our report to the President. I hope the Mamata government will allow us to visit the affected areas?”
The West Bengal panchayat polls was held on July 8. However, the voting day was marred with widespread violence, looting of ballots papers and rigging. There were reports of booth capturing, damaging of ballot boxes and assault of presiding officers from several districts such as Murshidabad, Cooch Behar, Malda, South 24 Parganas, North Dinajpur and Nadia. Reports also emerged of ballot boxes being set on fire and clashes between political parties in different locations.
West Bengal has 3,341 gram panchayats and the number of village panchayat election centres is 58,594. There are 63,239 seats at the Gram Panchayat level, 9730 at Panchayat Samiti and 928 at the Zila Parishad level. This time, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) is predicted to win the Panchayat elections by a wide margin. In the 2018 panchayat elections, which also saw a number of violent incidents, the TMC won 34% of the seats without facing any opposition.