Posted on 05/19/2008 9:38:48 AM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
New Delhi - At least 18 people were killed in clashes between workers of rival political parties during village-level elections in India's eastern state of West Bengal, news reports said Monday.
The violence between the ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the opposition Congress party workers in seven districts that went to polls Sunday also left hundreds injured, the Times of India daily reported.
The district of Murshidabad, 200 kilometres north of state capital Kolkata, was the worst affected with 16 deaths during the village council elections, the report said.
Villagers and some political workers died in cross-firing near polling booths or attacks on the houses of politicians in Murshidabad's Domkal and Raninagar areas.
Two people were killed in the northern Cooch Behar and Jalpaiguri districts on Sunday, the third and final phase of the polls, the Times reported.
The CPM cadre also clashed with workers from the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), a partner of the Left Front government in the Birbhum district.
The death toll in the village-level elections, held every five years, stood at 30, making it the bloodiest in the state's history. Nineteen people were killed during the last elections in 2003.
Local media reported that the CPM wanted to gain control over Murshidabad and the adjoining Malda district, both strongholds of the Congress party, ahead of India's general elections next year.
Congress leader Adhir Chowdhury accused the CPM of 'state-sponsored terrorism.'
'Our supporters could not even reach the polling booths because CPM was hand-in-glove with a section of the police and attacked our men,' Chowdhury told the newspaper.
But the CPM charged Chowdhury with 'unleashing a reign of terror.'
'They (Congress) had threatened violence a day before the polls. Congress was determined to provoke violence in Domkal, Raninagar and Beldanga areas,' CPM state secretary Biman Bose said.
West Bengal is governed by the world's longest-running elected Communist administration. The CPM-led Left Front has been running the state for more than three decades since it came to power in 1977.
Clashes between the pro-Islamist communists (CPI-M) and the pro-Islamist socialists (Congress)? Great! Let them kill each other.
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