Kolkata Municipal Corporation Elections: Opposition BJP members being beaten up, Supreme Court told

The Supreme Court was told today that opposition members of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were being beaten up and threatened to withdraw their candidature for the upcoming Kolkata Municipal Corporation Elections..Senior Advocate Menaka Guruswamy appearing for BJP mentioned the matter before the Bench of Chief Justice of India NV Ramana and Justices AS Bopanna and Hima Kohli."These are all election matters where the battle has to be fought on the ground," said CJI Ramana..Guruswamy then informed the Court that a similar matter was pending before the Bench headed by Justice DY Chandrachud. The Bench then replied that it would look into the matter..The petition sought a direction to the State functionaries to produce a comprehensive action plan and deploy sufficient Central Police forces to ensure that free and fair municipal elections are held in Kolkata. This, after BJP candidates allegedly received threats and were pressurised to withdraw their candidature..It is claimed that four BJP candidates - Paramita Dutta, Purnima Chakraborty, Dityata Kaur and Chandan Das went to police stations in their respective areas to file complaints, but the administration refused to register the same. In this light, the plea stated,"The Petitioners are constrained to file this writ petition seeking adequate security development in light of the targeted widespread post poll violence that occurred in the State of West Bengal in May 2021. The Petitioner’s submit that there is an urgent necessity to deploy central forces during elections to ensure free and fair elections.".A similar plea was filed in the apex court seeking additional security in Tripura during the municipal elections on account of political violence in the State. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) had also moved the Supreme Court alleging attacks on their party workers by ruling BJP..In that matter, the Bench of Justices DY Chandrachud, Surya Kant and Vikram Nath had last month directed the Union Ministry of Home Affairs to provide two additional companies of the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) to ensure that municipal elections underway in Tripura can take place without disruptions..[Tripura Municipal polls] Provide two additional CAPF companies, media to be given unhindered access: Supreme Court