Polls campaign cut short in West Bengal for security

In an unprecedented action, India's Election Commission cut short the election campaign in West Bengal citing "safety and security" of voters.

It also ordered immediate removal of West Bengal Home Secretary Atri Bhattacharya and Additional Director-general, (CID), Rajiv Kumar for "having interfered in the process of conducting polls by directing the West Bengal chief electoral officer (CEO)"  for deployment of police forces, our New Delhi correspondent reports.

The curtailing of the electioneering time in West Bengal came two days after activists of Trinamool Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party fought street battles using bottles, stones and bricks during a road show by BJP President Amit Shah in Kolkata on Tuesday.

During the violence, the bust of Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, one of the icons of Bengal's Renaissance, was vandalised in a college named after him.

Kumar, who was questioned by the Central Bureau of Investigation in connection with a probe into multi-million Rupee chit fund cases allegedly involving a number of Trinamool Congress leaders in West Bengal, is considered close to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.

Hitting back to the EC order, Mamata accused the poll body of being "biased and politically motivated."

"I am compelled to say that the commission is totally biased and politically motivated. It is full of RSS men. They only act according to the order of BJP. They never took an action on the basis of the complaints registered by the opposition," she said.

She alleged the EC has become a spokesperson of the BJP and takes orders from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah.

In a six-page order on Wednesday night, the EC took the unanimous view that some "special measures are urgently needed to arrest the prevailing situation in these nine parliamentary constituencies" in West Bengal where voting will take place on May 19.

The EC ordered that campaign must end by 10:00pm Indian time on Thursday — a day before schedule. Campaigning for the seventh and final phase of the general elections was scheduled to end at 6:00pm on Friday.

The EC invoked Article 324 of the Constitution for the first time in this year's national poll to curtail campaigning for the last phase of voting citing an "atmosphere of fear and hatred and widely prevalent fear psychosis" in the nine constituencies.

Mamata alleged: "Modi is doing all this in Bengal because he is scared of me. He is scared of the people of Bengal. If anybody asks me about the name of the Prime Minister, I would say I don't know. I do not want to take his name. He is a shame for the country."

"I have never been insulted like this. Modi is the ultimate fascist ruling here. The Election Commission has set a precedent. They have also indulged in vendetta politics," she said.