KOLKATA: A late-night sit-in by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) near a vote storage facility in Kolkata sparked tension after the party alleged irregularities involving postal ballots.
The controversy centred on the Khudiram Anushilan Kendra, where electronic voting machines (EVMs) for North Kolkata Assembly segments are kept in sealed strongrooms under security. TMC shared a video on social media claiming that people were moving inside a secured area using torchlight, calling it suspicious.
Following the video, TMC candidates Sashi Panja and Kunal Ghosh rushed to the venue and staged a protest. Ghosh alleged that the room housing the EVMs had been reopened around 4 pm after they left, and said officials did not allow them to enter.
As reports spread that Banerjee would visit the centre, party workers gathered in large numbers. However, she went to another facility in South Kolkata—Sakhawat Memorial School—where she stayed for about four hours to monitor the strongroom there.
Later, State Chief Electoral Officer Manoj Kumar Agarwal told reporters that strongrooms are not permitted to have power connections, and officials therefore used torchlights. He said the movement seen was not inside the EVM strongroom but in the area where postal ballots are segregated, adding that all parties had been informed by email in the morning that postal ballot segregation would begin at 4 pm. After the clarification, the protest in North Kolkata subsided, and additional armed police were deployed at counting centres in Kolkata.
