Calcutta, April 14: Poet Sankha Ghosh, who had spoken out against the 2007 Nandigram firing and the 2012 arrest of a professor for circulating a cartoon lampooning Mamata Banerjee, today met chief election commissioner Nasim Zaidi and said he had never seen such "terror" during elections in Bengal.
"I have not seen such scale of terror," Ghosh said, responding to a question after meeting Zaidi.
Ghosh had accompanied a Save Democracy Forum team that met the chief election commissioner to voice their concerns about violence and malpractice during voting in the first phase of the Assembly elections.
Among the others who were part of the delegation were retired Supreme Court judge Asok Kumar Ganguly, rights activist Bolan Gangopadhyay, social activist and writer Miratun Nahar, painter Samir Aich and actor Koushik Sen.
"Soumitra Chattopadhyay and Aparna Sen have fully supported our cause and empathised with our concern. They couldn't come owing to personal problems," Sen said.
The representatives of the Save Democracy Forum said they had told Zaidi that Bengal chief electoral officer Sunil Kumar Gupta should be removed and members of construction materials supply syndicates should be arrested before the next election phase on April 17.
"Anubrata Mondal, Trinamul's Birbhum president, should be arrested to ensure free and fair polls in the district," said Chanchal Chakrabarty, the secretary of the forum.
Later, Ghosh said the members of the forum had highlighted how Trinamul workers were intimidating voters.
"They (the commission's full bench) noted down the points we raised. We highlighted how ruling party cadres were roaming around with weapons, preventing Opposition agents from entering polling booths, and threatening and attacking voters," he told The Telegraph.
"Such incidents need to be stopped immediately. We also complained against the CEO (Gupta). He is a good human being but we feel he is not competent enough to tackle the situation in Bengal," Ghosh added.
The poet said conducting free and fair elections was as much the responsibility of the state administration as it was of the Election Commission.
" Dujoneri dwaittyo (it is the responsibility of both)," Ghosh said.
