Security forces patrol Durgapur on the eve of the election. Telegraph picture

July 4: Bengal will be paralysed tomorrow by a Left strike but one pocket — Durgapur — can breathe easy.

Durgapur subdivision has been kept outside the country-wide 12-hour bandh’s ambit as the bypoll to the Durgapur I Assembly seat is scheduled tomorrow.

“There will be no bandh in the entire Durgapur subdivision because of the bypoll,” Citu state secretary Kali Ghosh said this afternoon. “The 12-hour strike will be organised in the rest of Bengal as part of our all-India programme to protest the hike in fuel prices,” Ghosh added.

The Congress, however, today urged Navin Chawla, the chief election commissioner of India, to defer the bypoll in view of the bandh.

State Congress president Manas Bhuniya said in a letter to Chawla: “We fear that there will be no security for the voters in Durgapur tomorrow because CPM hooligans usually resort to vandalism and lawlessness during strikes in our state. This will jeopardise the election process tomorrow.”

Bhuniya also spoke to state chief electoral officer Sunil Gupta and requested him to hold the bypoll on “any other date convenient for the commission”.

Trinamul Congress chief Mamata Banerjee too requested the Election Commission to postpone the bypoll.

“I have requested the Election Commission to defer tomorrow’s bypoll,” she told a news conference at her Kalighat home today.

Asked why the Congress had written to the Election Commission only a day before the bypoll, Bhuniya said: “We received information from our party workers in Durgapur at the last moment that the CPM would not allow our voters to come out of their homes to cast their ballots.”

Bhuniya said he had discussed the matter with Union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee before sending the letter to the commission.

The subdivisional officer of Durgapur, Mrinal Rano, who is also the returning officer for the bypoll, said: “We have not yet heard anything about the Congress’s letter to the Election Commission.”

Bhuniya meet

Bhuniya today met Behrampore MP Adhir Chowdhury and North 24-Parganas Congress chief Debi Ghosal to thrash out differences that arose after he was made state Congress president. The move came after Bhuniya met Mukherjee at the Union finance minister’s Dhakuria residence.