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Four Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) activists were injured after being fired at in Cooch Behar district on Friday, the day before West Bengal's panchayat elections. A Congress worker was slain in the Murshidabad district.
Congressman Aravind Mandal was slain in the Ranninagar neighborhood of Murshidabad. He was Hriday Mandal's brother, the party's candidate for the panchayat elections. The event happened on the day that Governor CV Ananda Bose was supposed to tour the district's violent districts.
The Trinamool Congress (TMC) is accused by the Congress of beating Aravind Mandal to death. TMC disputed the claims.
With this most recent death, there have now been five fatalities in Murshidabad alone in the lead-up to the panchayat elections. Since the start of the nomination process, 18 persons have died.
On the other side, four BJP employees were shot at last night in the Dinhata neighborhood of Cooch Behar when their TMC rivals allegedly tossed homemade bombs and started firing at them.
Milan Barman, Chandra Barman, Arjun Barman, and Hero Barman were named as the injured. They were all given admission to a local hospital.
The governor will travel to several of Murshidabad's troubled neighborhoods in the interim. He has already been to Cooch Behar, where political party confrontations broke out, Bhangar, Canning, and Basanti in South 24 Parganas.
The crucial panchayat elections are set for July 8 (Saturday). The election was over on Thursday. The zilla parishad, panchayat samiti, and gramme panchayat are the three tiers of the three-tiered panchayat system, in which 5.67 crore individuals are eligible to exercise their franchise.
According to officials, there will be about 65,000 active central police officers and 70,000 state police officers deployed for the rural voting.
