Kolkata, April 28 A day before the second phase of the Assembly elections in West Bengal, Trinamool Congress, on Tuesday, again approached the Calcutta High Court against the preventive arrests conducted in the state from April 26 morning till April 27 evening as per instructions of the Election Commission of India (ECI).
On Monday evening, the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), West Bengal, informed that 1,095 preventive arrests were made in the last 24 hours since Sunday evening, and the same figure was 1,583 during the last 36 hours since Sunday morning.
The four-time Trinamool Congress Lok Sabha member and senior advocate Kalyan Banerjee on Tuesday approached the division bench of Calcutta High Court’s Chief Justice Sujoy Paul and Justice Partha Sarathi Sen, claiming that preventive arrests of at least 350 persons were in direct violation of an earlier order by the same bench on April 22 against rampant preventive arrest indiscriminately branding people as potential “trouble-makers”.
In his petition, Banerjee had sought a hearing in the matter on an emergency basis. The petition has been admitted, and the matter is likely to come up for hearing in the second half on Tuesday.
In its earlier order on April 22, the Calcutta High Court, while allowing preventive arrests to be done in accordance with the provisions of the prevention laws, also ruled that no one could be arrested or detained just by branding them as potential “trouble-makers”.
Of the total preventive arrests made from April 26 morning to April 27 evening, the maximum arrests have been made in East Burdwan district at 479, followed by North 24 Parganas at 319, South 24 Parganas at 246, the electoral district of Kolkata (Uttar) at 109, Hooghly at 49, and Nadia and Howrah at 32 each.
One of the preventive arrests had been that of Narugopal Bhakat, the Trinamool Congress Councillor of Ward 22 of Burdwan town in East Burdwan district
The total arrest figure also includes the four nabbed in connection with the clash between Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Trinamool Congress activists at Jagatdal in North 24 Parganas district on Sunday night. These four are Koushik Das, 27; Sikander Prasad, 39; Gopal Routh, 40; and Shyamdev Shaw, 55.
Disclaimer: This post has been auto-published from an agency feed without any modifications to the text and has not been reviewed by an editor