West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday evening said that the Election Commission of India (ECI) decision to cut short political campaign in Bengal by 24 hours and transferring two top officers in the state were actually decisions taken by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The ECI today transferred home secretary Atri Bhattacharya and ADG-CID Rajeev Kumar. Kumar has been asked to report to the Ministry of Home Affairs at 10 am tomorrow.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe EC has lost all credibility. Is it the BJP\u2019s mouthpiece? Democracy is under threat in this country,\u201d she said at a press conference. Banerjee added that the order would be complied with, and the government was not moving the Supreme Court against the order now but leaving it to the people to give a fitting reply through the ballot box.<\/p>\n
\u201cBengal has been insulted, and Narendra Modi has lost the battle politically,\u201d she said.\u00a0\u201cAmit Shah threatened the EC and the decision on Bengal was taken by them accordingly,\u201d Banerjee added.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe BJP caused trouble in Amit Shah\u2019s rally in Kolkata yesterday, they destroyed Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar\u2019s statue, but the EC rewarded the BJP. The party\u2019s leader Nirmala Sitharaman yesterday demanded that my campaigns be stopped and the EC has acted accordingly,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Banerjee said Modi had two meetings scheduled in Bengal tomorrow and the EC order to stop campaigning at 10 pm tomorrow had been done keeping that in mind. \u201cOnce Modi\u2019s campaign is over, stop all campaigns \u2013 that is the main idea behind the decision,\u201d she said, adding that she had re-scheduled her rallies and meetings and will hold all of them on Thursday itself.<\/p>\n
Banerjee said that the EC has been biased in favour of the BJP throughout and not taken any action against either Narendra Modi or Amit Shah despite repeated allegations of violation of model code of conduct.<\/p>\n
She appealed to all the 23 Opposition political parties to stand by her and also appealed to the BJP\u2019s allies to do the same.<\/p>\n
Banerjee questioned the decisions on Kumar and Bhattacharya’s transfers. “Why are they so upset with Rajeev Kumar? Because he is getting hold of hawala money? Is it the job of the EC to send an officer on Central government deputation?” she said, adding that Kumar was neither the city police commissioner any more nor involved in election duty.\u00a0“The home secretary had written to the Election Commision for better functioning of the teams,” she said, adding that the EC’s decisions were influenced by the inputs of a gaddar\u00a0<\/em>[Banerjee has of late been referring to her former party colleague Mukul Roy by this name] and another BJP leader.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Mamata Banerjee leaves it to people to give the BJP “fitting reply” through their votes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":279,"featured_media":5516,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"tmauthors":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5515","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\/5515","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=5515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5515\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5515"},{"taxonomy":"tmauthors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tmauthors?post=5515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}