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Journalism of Courage
THE BJP and the CPI (Marxist) filed twice as many nominations for the July 8 panchayat elections than they did for the 2018 rural polls, according to the data shared by the West Bengal State Election Commission on Friday.
While the Opposition parties attributed the increase in nomination numbers to the “diminishing popularity” of the TMC, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee claimed that hike showed that the latter’s claims of not being able to file nominations were wrong.
According to the data released by the state poll panel, the BJP had filed 56,321 nominations and CPI(M) 48,646 on Thursday – the last date to file nominations for this year’s panchayat polls. In 2018, the BJP had filed 29,528 nominations and the CPI(M) 22,981.
The three-tier panchayat system in Bengal, there are 63,229 gram panchayats, 9,730 panchayat samitis and 928 zila parishads. The total number of seats are 73,887. The TMC, meanwhile, had filed 85,817 nominations till Thursday. The Congress filed nominations in 17,750 seats, Independent in 16,293, Forward Bloc in 1,595 and others in 10,042, an official said.
The data doesn’t include the nominations which were filed by prospective candidates who were allegedly prevented from filing nominations at Basirhat in North 24 Parganas district on Friday, following a Calcutta High Court order.
The last day to withdraw nominations for the panchayat polls is June 20.
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