West Bengal BJP President Samik Bhattacharya and Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari have approached the Election Commission of India to halt the tracking of their mobile phones by certain top police officers in the state. They lodged a formal complaint at the West Bengal Chief Electoral Officer’s Office, accusing specific police officials of orchestrating the tracking of their phones. Adhikari and Bhattacharya publicly identified the police officers allegedly involved in monitoring their cell phone locations.
The Leader of the Opposition, Adhikari, asserted that the state’s Director General of Intelligence Branch, Vineet Kumar Goyal, and the Director General of State Special Task Force, Javed Shamim, were part of the phone tracking operation. He claimed to possess concrete evidence supporting these accusations. Adhikari also highlighted that despite the prevailing model code of conduct due to the imminent two-phase Assembly polls, certain police officers were not adhering to the Election Commission’s directives.
In response to the allegations, State Trinamool Congress Vice-President Jai Prakash Majumdar dismissed the claims of phone tracking made by the BJP leaders. Majumdar characterized these accusations as manifestations of the BJP’s apprehension and frustration over the anticipated defeat in the upcoming state Assembly elections. He criticized the BJP for resorting to baseless allegations out of fear, emphasizing that the Union Home Minister Amit Shah possessed the Pegasus software and insinuating that the BJP was deflecting attention from its own misdeeds.
