Calcutta, Jan. 21: Two days after CPM general secretary Prakash Karat warned election observers touring Bengal to work within “prescribed limits”, the state CPM secretary complained to the Election Commission against “patent violation of regulations” by one of them.

N.B. Dhal, who went to Howrah, had allegedly written to the Sankrail block development officer on a Trinamul Congress letterhead, asking him to delete the names of “dead/shifted voters” and “some illegal Bangladeshi immigrants”.

“There is nothing wrong in such advice/instruction from an election observer to the BDO. But what is wrong is that Dhal had used the letterhead of the Trinamul Congress to send his missive. We consider this highly objectionable and an example of electoral malpractice,” Biswas told reporters at the party headquarters.

The commission had sent 19 observers to Bengal to identify “bogus voters” on the electoral rolls.

Biswas asked: “If a subdivisional officer can be suspended for minor irregularities, why should action not be taken against the observer for such a major lapse?”

He pointed out that Dhal should have written on his own pad or even a blank paper to write to a government official. A copy of Dhal’s letter was forwarded to the poll panel during the day.

Caught on the wrong foot, Mamata Banerjee said: “I will have to crosscheck with the party’s Howrah unit if such a letter was at all written by the observer. The CPM might have manipulated the letter to malign us.”

Former BJP chief L.K. Advani, who attended a programme in the city today with Mamata, called upon the Election Commission to get “tough” for the sake of free and fair polls in Bengal.