Tripura BJP District President Arrested for Alleged Assault on Election Official

BJPs North Tripura district president Kajal Das was accused of beating up presiding officer Narayan Chakraborty at the booth under the Bagbassa assembly segment during the second phase of the parliamentary polls on April 26.

A district president of BJP was arrested for allegedly assaulting a presiding officer at a booth during the Lok Sabha elections to Tripura East constituency last week, police said on Monday. BJP's North Tripura district president Kajal Das was accused of beating up presiding officer Narayan Chakraborty at the booth under the Bagbassa assembly segment during the second phase of the parliamentary polls on April 26. The incident occurred when the presiding officer was requesting electors to maintain the queue and collect 'tokens' as they were waiting to cast their votes around 5 pm, the closing time for the voting process. An FIR was lodged against the accused on Sunday after a purported video of the attack on the presiding officer went viral on social media.

PTI did not verify the authenticity of the video clip.

''Based on the FIR, police arrested Kajal Das for attacking the presiding officer at a polling booth of the Bagbassa assembly segment on Monday. He was sent to a court in Dharmanagar for remand,'' North Tripura Superintendent of Police Bhanupada Chakraborty told PTI over the phone.

An investigation into the assault on the election officer is underway, he said.

In another incident, BJP MLA Yadav Lal Nath and his associates entered the same booth under the Tripura East Lok Sabha constituency on April 26 and allegedly manhandled BLO Chinmoy Das even though the legislator is not a voter of the particular booth.

Nath, the Bagbassa MLA, was served a notice for ''manhandling the booth-level officer'' (BLO) by the district election officer.

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