Kolkata, March 31 – On Tuesday, the President of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in West Bengal, Samik Bhattacharya, and the Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in the State Assembly, Suvendu Adhikari, approached the Election Commission of India (ECI) to request intervention in preventing the tracking of their mobile phones by some high-ranking police officers in the state.
Both LoP Adhikari and Bhattacharya visited the office of the West Bengal Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) on Tuesday afternoon and submitted a written complaint, naming several senior police officials as being responsible for tracking the location of their mobile phones.
Later, speaking to the media, LoP Adhikari and Bhattacharya also named the police officials they accused of being involved in tracking the location of their cell phones.
"The Director General of the state's Intelligence Branch, Vineet Kumar Goyal, and the Director General of the State Special Task Force, Javed Shamim, are involved in the phone tracking process. We have concrete evidence to support our allegations," the Leader of the Opposition claimed.
He also stated that he had informed the ECI that other police officers, such as the Director of Securities for the state, Manoj Kumar Verma; the Superintendent of the Jangipur Police District, Mehedi Hasan; and the District Police Superintendent of West Midnapore, Palash Dhali, were not properly implementing the Commission's directions despite the Model Code of Conduct in force in the state during the upcoming two-phase Assembly elections next month.
State Trinamool Congress Vice-President, Jai Prakash Majumdar, refuted the allegations of mobile phone tracking by the two top BJP leaders and stated that such allegations reflected the frustration of the BJP due to the fear of inevitable defeat in the upcoming state Assembly elections.
"The BJP is frustrated and afraid of defeat, and therefore they are raising such baseless allegations. These are nothing more than the fear of defeat. The Union Home Minister, Amit Shah, has Pegasus. Now they are making unfair and false allegations about the crimes they themselves commit," Majumdar added.