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Journalism of Courage
While both the ruling party and the Opposition Saturday held different opinions on how “peaceful” or “not peaceful” the election to Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) were, the state election commissioner, Susanta Ranjan Upadhyaya, during a post-poll press conference here, offered some semblance of clarity when he said the election was “not entirely peaceful”.
“We received about 70 complaints today. I won’t be able to say that the poll process was entirely peaceful. The nature of complaints ranged from booth capturing to intimidation to preventing voters from casting their votes. There were complaints about polling agents not being allowed to sit in the booths as well. In an ideal poll, there are no such complaints,” Upadhyaya said, adding that they tried their best with the available resources to conduct a fair poll.
“We tried our best to address all issues but it is also true that we were not successful in tackling all complaints,” Upadhyaya said.
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The SEC made it clear that repolls may be held at some polling stations. “We are going through the complaints. Next we will get a report from the Municipal Returning Officer via the district magistrate. Then the observers will submit their reports. We will tally those with the report we have received from political parties and then decide whether repoll is necessary at any booth,” he said.
Upadhyaya admitted that a large portion of voters could not exercise their franchise owing to “proxy voting”. “I have received complaints that voters, after standing in the queue for a long time, learnt that their votes had already been cast.”
He also said that the booths earmarked as sensitive ahead of the elections did not report many complaints and informed that most of the complaints came from Wards 57, 58, 59, 64, 102, 103, 104, and 109.
The SEC also admitted to receiving a complaint “from a CPM leader” that the ousted TMC leader Arabul Islam was present in Kolkata with his supporters.
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