Northeast Desk, 30th April: A district president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Tripura, Kajal Das, was arrested on allegations of assaulting a presiding officer at a polling booth during the Lok Sabha elections to the Tripura East constituency last week, as confirmed by police on Monday.
Das, who serves as the BJP’s North Tripura district president, was accused of physically assaulting presiding officer Narayan Chakraborty at a booth within the Bagbassa assembly segment during the second phase of the parliamentary polls on April 26.
The altercation reportedly occurred around 5 pm, the closing time for the voting process, when Chakraborty was instructing voters to maintain the queue and collect ‘tokens’ before casting their votes.
Following the circulation of a purported video depicting the attack on the presiding officer, an FIR was lodged against Das on Sunday.
While the authenticity of the video clip was not verified by PTI, North Tripura Superintendent of Police Bhanupada Chakraborty confirmed Das’s arrest based on the FIR. Das was subsequently presented before a court in Dharmanagar for remand.
Investigations into the assault on the election officer are currently underway, as stated by Chakraborty.
In a separate incident related to the same booth under the Tripura East Lok Sabha constituency, BJP MLA Yadav Lal Nath and his associates allegedly manhandled Booth-Level Officer (BLO) Chinmoy Das on April 26, despite Nath not being a voter of that particular booth.
Nath, who represents the Bagbassa constituency in the legislative assembly, received a notice for the alleged misconduct from the district election officer.