A polling booth in the Satali tea garden where only 80 of the 1,200 votes were cast till 1pm on Thursday. Picture by Anirban Choudhury

Alipurduar, April 30: The boycott call given by the Dooars-Terai coordination committee of the Akhil Bharatiya Adivasi Vikas Parishad affected voting in at least 50 booths in the three Lok Sabha seats of Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri and Alipurduar today.

Two supporters of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha were injured in a clash with Adivasis who allegedly set on fire three houses of the hill party members in Banarhat’s Palashbari Tea Estate. The Morcha has complained to the district magistrate.

Fifteen Parishad members were arrested from Malbazar of Jalpaiguri, said Vandana Yadav, the district magistrate. Three electronic voting machines (EVMs) in as many booths of the Kanthalguri tea estate were allegedly smashed by Parishad members. However, with the data units remaining intact, the votes cast were not affected. Danga Bek, the outfit’s local convener, has threatened with an indefinite bandh in the Dooars if the accused persons are not released by tonight.

The state committee of the Parishad, which had asked the Dooars unit to withdraw its boycott call, cancelled the affiliation of the unit when it refused to agree. Raju Bara, a state committee leader, today claimed that because of the agitation, not a single vote was cast in 62 booths of the region.

District magistrate of Darjeeling Surendra Gupta said no votes had been cast in six booths in the Naxalbari Assembly segment. Yadav said not a single ballot was cast in 17 booths in Jalpaiguri district and 13,210 voters did not exercise the franchise.

In the Satali tea estate from where the RSP’s Alipurduar candidate Manohar Tirkey comes, only 20 per cent of the ballots had been cast till 3pm.

The situation was similar in Hantapara, where not a single vote had been cast till 3pm in a booth that had 762 voters. In an adjoining booth, only 11 of the 957 votes were cast. The boycott was evident outside tea gardens also, as only nine of the 1,375 votes had been cast in a Shamuktala booth.

“Sab political party faltu hai (all political parties are worthless),” said Saraswati Oraon of Hantapara in Madarihat. “We usually cast our votes, but the government is not listening to our demands.”

John Barla, the president of the Terai-Dooars unit of the Parishad, claimed that 90 per cent of the Adivasis had stayed away from voting. “The Front allies threatened us with dire consequences after the polls. We shall see what they can do,” he said.

According to Tirkey, the boycott was but in a “few tea estates”. “Criminals in the name of the Parishad did not allow people to cast their ballots,” he said.

A state committee leader of the Parishad said the community, which was against Gorkhaland, abstained from voting largely because of the government’s “apathy”. “This is a pathetic development.”