The ruling Trinamool Congress in West Bengal on Saturday said that it has filed a complaint with the Election Commission alleging the unauthorised sorting of postal ballot covers at a strongroom housing Electronic Voting Machines in Kolkata, PTI reported.
This comes ahead of the counting of votes for the Assembly elections on Monday.
Polling was held in the state in two phases on April 23 and April 29. Repolling was being held on Saturday at 15 polling stations in the South 24 Parganas district that voted in the second phase of the elections.
Workers from the TMC camping outside the strongroom at Khudiram Anushilan Kendra alleged that eight trunks containing postal ballots were brought in at 4 am and were taken to a room that had no security camera coverage.
The EVMs from several Assembly segments in northern and eastern Kolkata are stored at Khudiram Anushilan Kendra.
An unidentified TMC member told the news agency that the party had been demanding that every “single millimetre of space where EVMs and postal ballots be under CCTV surveillance”.
When these trunks were taken inside, it was “clear that they were taken to a room not under CCTV cover”, the member said and asked why this should have happened.
Tensions escalated at the site after Purnima Chakraborty, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s candidate from Shyampukur, arrived at the spot with her supporters, PTI reported. Both sides started shouting slogans as police attempted to bring the situation under control.
Chakraborty claimed that the TMC workers were creating chaos outside the strongroom as they had sensed defeat.
Subsequently, the TMC said that a complaint had been filed with the poll panel in connection with the matter.
Similar allegations in North 24 Parganas district
Similar scenes were also seen outside another strongroom at the Barasat Government College in North 24 Parganas district, PTI reported. TMC workers alleged that security cameras were switched off here for 17 minutes in the morning.
Narayan Goswami, the candidate for the TMC from Ashoknagar, also demanded that he be allowed inside the building.
However, an unidentified official from the Election Commission said that the security cameras were working fine and added that the power cables of the monitors installed outside the strongroom had snapped.
The BJP also shared a purported video from the Purba Bardhaman district that showed a person scaling the walls of a storeroom at the University Institute of Technology. However, the poll panel said that the video was old, adding that the person seen in it had been installing security cameras and air conditioners.
Read Scroll’s coverage of the 2026 West Bengal Assembly elections here.
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