Not Easy For EC
It's a first, anywhere. Officials of the Election Commission – the central election-monitoring watchdog vested with the responsibility of ensuring free and fair elections – have been roughed up in a small town in north Bengal, while they were trying to do their job. And the roughing up was done by goons allegedly associated with the ruling Trinamool Congress party. How do we know that? Well, first of all the goons – who arrived in a large gang on motorbikes – were waving large Trinamool flags. Moreover, news cameras spotted amongst the anti-socials a man shouting instructions like "beat them up" and, "set fire to their vehicles". This man turned out to be the son-in-law of the local contestant. Though he has vehemently denied that it was him – saying that he was somewhere else – news channels kept showing the footage, zooming on his face. Last heard, he is still going blue in the face, denying.
Didi's Didigiri
Now, this tussle between the Central Election Commission and the ruling Trinamool party has a history. Not too distant a history. Just two to three days before the "bash-up-the-EC-guys/burn-their-vehicles" episode rocked the state, sending shockwaves and shivers down the spines of the democratically-inclined people, none other then the Bengal chief minister, took punga with the EC. The EC, which had sent some officials to test the pre-poll political climate in the state (to ensure that it will be free and fair, as they are supposed to do), found that six officials were too close to the ruling TMC to be neutral election officers. So they asked the Mamata Banerjee state government to send them to the Centre to be deployed in a part of the country where they cannot exert or exercise their influence. Mamata flatly refused saying "nothing doing."