Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and Leader of Opposition in West Bengal Assembly Suvendu Adhikari with party leaders stage a protest against the post-poll violence after the by-elections in the state, at Raj Bhavan, in Kolkata on Sunday.
| Photo Credit: ANI
Hundreds of BJP supporters joined Suvendu Adhikari, the Leader of the Opposition in the West Bengal Assembly and other leaders of the BJP’s State unit in a demonstration outside Raj Bhawan on July 14, protesting incidents of post-poll violence.
The protestors carried photographs of the victims, and were joined by BJP MLAs Agnimitra Paul, Ashim Kumar Sarkar, and former MP Arjun Singh, as well as other senior leaders such as Tathagata Roy, Tapas Roy and Rudranil Ghosh.
Calcutta High Court gave permission for the demonstration after Mr. Adhikari moved the court, citing the precedent of October 2023, when Trinamool Congress general secretary Abhishek Banerjee staged a similar protest at the same spot. The agitation comes after a humiliating defeat for the BJP in all four of the bypolls held for Assembly seats in West Bengal.
‘TMC intimidation’
The Leader of Opposition also called for protests across the State in the constituencies where the bypolls were held. “Hundreds of people from these constituencies who could not vote and have no ink on their fingers because of the intimidation of the Trinamool Congress will assemble outside Raj Bhawan,” Mr. Adhikari said.
The Trinamool Congress won all four seats for which bypolls were held on July 10, despite the BJP having a lead in three of the parliamentary constituencies where these Assembly seats lie in the recently concluded Lok Sabha election.
On July 19, a protest will be held in these constituencies, where BJP leaders including MLAs will visit the residences of party workers, Mr. Adhikari said. He also called for a demonstration outside the Kolkata headquarters of the Calcutta State Electricity Corporation (CESC) in protest against hiked power tariffs in the Kolkata Metropolitan Area.
TMC worker killed
In the latest incident of post-poll violence, a Trinamool Congress worker was killed at Islampur in the Uttar Dinajpur district. Bapi Roy, 35 was shot by unidentified people at an eatery in the Srikrishnapur area of Islampur along the National Highway. The TMC worker was declared dead at a health facility.
Mohammad Sajjad, another youth who sustained bullet injuries in the attack, has been shifted to the North Bengal Medical College and Hospital. The family members of the deceased TMC worker demanded that the Central Bureau of Investigation conduct a probe into the attack.
Islampur had made headlines earlier this month, when a video of a woman being flogged by a local Trinamool Congress worker in the area had gone viral. The police had registered a suo motu case and arrested Tajmul Hossain, the accused in the case.