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Ara MP to Election Commission: Remove Bhojpur DM, SP

PATNA: The Election Commission of India (ECI) has asked the ministry of home affairs (MHA) to look into the complaints of Union minister and BJP nominee from Ara Lok Sabha seat R K Singh , who has demanded immediate transfer of the district magistrate and the superintendent of police of Bhojpur district for their alleged partisan role in the just concluded Lok Sabha election.



The MHA, in turn, is learnt to have asked Bihar chief secretary Deepak Kumar and director general of police (DGP) Gupteshwar Pandey to take appropriate action after an in-depth investigation into the matter. Singh, a retired bureaucrat and former Union secretary, is seeking re-election from the Ara Lok Sabha seat.

Singh has threatened to launch sit-in agitation in front of the counting hall to press for his demands. “The EVMs are not safe till the two officials — DM and SP — are in the district headquarters. Their role in the election on Sunday was not fair. The authorities concerned should remove the two officials before the start of the counting process,” he told reporters in Ara, around 60km from Patna, on Monday.

Singh, who had retired as Union home secretary before joining politics, further alleged that some BJP workers were unnecessarily harassed by the police during the polling on Sunday. One Chandan Pandey, a functionary of the BJP Yuva Morcha, was thrashed and detained by the police at the Mufassil police station and tortured without any reason, he alleged.

When some other functionaries of the organization, including Sandeep Kumar Pintu, Shambhu Chaurasia, Anand Kumar and Raghvendra Kumar reached the Mufassil police station to ascertain the reason behind Pandey’s detention, they too were misbehaved by the SHO Ravindra Ram, he said. The BJP Yuva Morcha functionaries alleged that the SHO also fired at them but the bullet missed the target.

The SHO, on the other hand, said he fired in self-defence as a mob of 30-40 people had surrounded the police station after the elections were over on Sunday. Efforts to contact Bhojpur DM Sanjeev Kumar and SP Aditya Kumar proved futile.

The BJP nominee has demanded suspension and immediate arrest of the erring SHO for “beating up party workers in police custody”.

Chief secretary Deepak Kumar, however, said he had no information about any directive issued either by the ECI or the MHA. DGP Pandey didn’t pick up his official cellphone.

Singh said he had earlier talked to CM Nitish Kumar, deputy CM Sushil Kumar Modi and state BJP president Nityanand Rai and apprised them of the incident.

The BJP candidate is locked in a tough contest with Raju Yadav of CPI-ML. RJD has supported the candidature of Yadav and didn’t field any candidate of the party from the seat.

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