North 24 Parganas (West Bengal) [India], July 16 : In a scathing attack on the Trinamool Congress, Union Minister of State for Shipping Shantanu Thakur stated that the TMC government's tenure would not extend beyond five months.
Speaking at a party programme in his Bongaon Lok Sabha constituency in North 24 Parganas district, Shantanu Thakur said, "I guarantee that this government will collapse within the next five months."
He further said that "BJP would have bagged thousands of more seats if TMC not resorted to widespread rigging in the recently concluded panchayat polls."
The Panchayat elections in West Bengal took place on July 8 and counting of the votes for 63,229 -Gram Panchayat seats took place on July 11.
TMC has won 28,985 seats and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) 7,764 seats, while Congress has secured 2,022 seats so far. TMC was leading on 1,540 panchayat seats while BJP was leading on 417, according to the State Election Commission (SEC).
Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) has won 2,409 seats and is leading in 260 seats. Other parties won 725 seats and leading on 23 seats, while independents which included TMC rebels won 1,656 seats and are maintaining a led in 104 seats.
Elections were held on July 8 under tight security, with approximately 5.67 crore voters participating and deciding the fate of 2.06 lakh candidates vying for 73,887 seats in rural areas of West Bengal.
However, the voting day was marred with widespread violence, looting of ballots papers and rigging. There were reports of booth capturing, damaging of ballot boxes and assault of presiding officers from several districts such as Murshidabad, Cooch Behar, Malda, South 24 Parganas, North Dinajpur and Nadia.
Reports also emerged of ballot boxes being set on fire and clashes between political parties in different locations.
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