The All India Trinamool Congress, the ruling party in West Bengal through the party General Secretary and senior leader Subrata Bakshi has shot off a letter to the Chief Election Commissioner asking for removal of Ajay V Nayak, special observer for West Bengal in the Parliamentary General Elections 2019.
\nThe three-page letter, hasrecorded TMC\u2019s \u2018objection to the statements of Mr. Ayay V. Nayak\u2019 madeon Saturday, in which he likened the law and order situation prevailing in West Bengal to that prevailing in Bihar some 10 years ago. Terming the attitude of the special observer as partisan the ruling party has \u2018prayed\u2019 for his immediate removal to uphold the spirit of free and fair polls as propagated by the Election Commission of India.
\nReminding the ECI of the purpose of appointment of a special observer TMC in its letter noted that such an official should be \u2018beyond any controversy\u2019. However, in this situation that was not the case the letter stated and mentioned that the official\u2019s remarks were \u2018highly objectionable and undesirable\u2019 and went against his duty of \u2018upholding constitutional principle of free and fair election\u2019.
\nTMC further pointed out that the official\u2019s statements were contrary to the position held by the ECI. ECI had termed the first phase of elections in the state as peaceful and the special observer had also said that. Had that been true, how could the same person take a
\ndifferent stance within 48 hours, the letter questioned.
\nThe letter also noted that the appointment of the special observer was \u2018in violation of the provisions of the Representation of People Act\u2019. The letter also drew attention to the proximity of the official in question to the BJP top brass as also to the RSS and accused that he had made the statements at the behest of his political masters. The
\nletter noted that while the official should have stayed \u2018neutral\u2019, he had become a \u2018political mouthpiece\u2019 and was serving the cause of the BJP, thereby \u2018creating a fear psychosis among the electorate\u2019 and therefore should be immediately recalled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A copy of the letter has also been sent to the Chief Electoral Officer, West Bengal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":279,"featured_media":5274,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"tmauthors":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5273","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-bengal"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/279"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5273"},{"taxonomy":"tmauthors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tmauthors?post=5273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}