West Bengal panchayat polls: re-polling underway in two booths

Kolkata (West Bengal) : Re-polling is being held on booth number 79 and 80 in Jalpaiguri's Ambikanagar Village on Sunday.Heavy police force has been deployed at the booths to ensure voting is held peacefully and smoothly.

Voting, which began at 7 am, will end at 5 pm.The panchayat elections in West Bengal saw huge-scale violence this time. Clashes between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Trinamool Congress (TMC) workers resulted in the death of at least 20 people and injuries to 50 others on the polling day -- May 14.

The Congress, Communist Party of India (Marxist), Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) and other parties of the Left Front also staged a protest outside the State Election Commission (SEC) in Kolkata against the incidents of violence.Following the violence, re-polling was conducted in 568 booths across the state on May 16.

Taking note of the incident, the Ministry of Home Affairs also sought a report from the state government regarding incidents of violence during the recently-concluded panchayat election, wherein ruling Trinamool Congress.

On May 14, five crore people voted to select their representatives for 621 zilla parishads, 6,000 panchayat samitis, and nearly 31,000 gram panchayats.