West Bengal Governor Dr CV Ananda Bose on Monday said that he will visit the areas affected by incidents of violence ahead of the July 8 panchayat elections to assess the situation by himself.
Bose, who is on a four-day trip to Darjeeling district, paid a surprise visit to the University of North Bengal where he was shown black flags by members of the student's wing of the ruling Trinamool Congress who also shouted "go back" to him.
"I want to assess the panchayat election situation by myself. Some atrocities and some violence have taken place in various places of West Bengal," Bose told reporters in Siliguri, the largest town in the northern part of the state.
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Widespread violence over the filing of nominations for the three-tier panchayat polls has left at least eight people dead and several injured in various parts of the state in the past two weeks.
State Election Commissioner (SEC) Rajiva Sinha called on the governor at Raj Bhavan in Kolkata on Sunday evening and they held a two-hour-long meeting. "I would also like to meet the people, the survivors... the victims, and understand how this has affected them," the governor said on Monday.
Well-placed sources said that apart from Darjeeling, Bose is likely to visit violence-hit areas of the districts of Uttar Dinajpur, Jalpaiguri and Murshidabad. The governor has already visited two such places in South 24 Parganas district.
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Meanwhile, on his way to Darjeeling, Bose paid a surprise visit to the University of North Bengal here. Members of Trinamool Chhatra Parishad, the student wing of the TMC, showed black flags to the governor, also the chancellor of the state-run university.
Bose held an hour-and-a-half-long meeting with interim Vice-Chancellor Sanchari Mukhopadhyay and other senior officials. The governor is scheduled to hold a meeting with all the vice-chancellors of all universities of North Bengal on Wednesday.
