Kolkata, March 25 A plea was filed in the Calcutta High Court on Tuesday seeking central armed paramilitary force (CAPF) deployment for the polls to a cooperative bank in West Bengal.
The petition by Swapan Bera, seeking special security cover for the forthcoming elections for Contai Co-Operative Agriculture & Rural Development Bank Ltd in East Midnapore district, was admitted by the division bench of Chief Justice T.S. Sivagnanam and Justice Chaiali Chattopadhyay and is expected to come up for hearing any day during the current week.
Last year, CAPF personnel were deployed at the election for the Contai Co-Operative Bank in December last year following an order from the Supreme Court. At that point of time, the apex court also ordered the installation of CCTV cameras at the polling stations to prevent electoral malpractices.
Citing this, Bera has now approached the Calcutta High Court for similar deployment for the coming election apprehending election malpractices.
In his petition, Bera claimed that in the election scheduled on March 29, violence by the supporters of the ruling Trinamool Congress was apprehended, and hence to prevent this, the deployment of CAPF had become necessary.
If the High Court accepts the plea and directs the deployment of CAPF, this will be the second time within a little over three months that central forces will be deployed for elections for any cooperative bank in the state.
Besides CAPF deployment for the Contai Co-operative Bank election in December last year, the entire process, from voting to counting, was under the scanner of 300 CCTV cameras installed in a total of 14 polling stations.
Prohibitory orders barring an assembly of more than a particular number of people in an area around 200 metre of radius of the polling station were also issued then. Besides the CAPF personnel, on average around 60 personnel from the state police forces were also deployed at the polling stations then.
East Midnapore is the native district of BJP leader and Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly, Suvendu Adhikari. His younger brother, Soumendu Adhikari, is currently the MP from the Kanthi Lok Sabha seat, under which the Contai Co-operative Bank comes.
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