TMC accuses EC of rigging norms to allot webcasting contract to Guj firm
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Kolkata: Trinamool Congress on Wednesday wrote to the Election Commission accusing the poll body of rigging norms to allot a poll-day webcasting contract to a Gujarat-based firm.
In a two-page letter, senior state minister Chandrima Bhattacharya, also the party vice-president, urged the EC to "take urgent and appropriate steps" which are fair, transparent, and based on merit.
The agency was tasked by the EC to do webcasting of polls in Bengal, starting with the Kaliganj bypolls, scheduled on Thursday. The results will be announced on June 23. The Gujarat-based agency edged past two other applicants, scoring a perfect 100 in the quality-cum-cost based selection (QCBS) method, a matrix never used in any poll in Bengal, the party alleged.
The tender for the bypoll was floated on June 2.
Bhattacharya, addressing reporters at Trinamool Bhawan, said, "What should have been a transparent and competitive bidding process has now emerged as a textbook case of contract rigging designed to favour a pre-selected vendor and deliberately eliminate capable, experienced Bengal-based agencies. The tender timeline was unusually tight, effectively disqualifying regional, experienced service providers.
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Bhattacharya said, "The technical evaluation process was conducted in clear violation of norms. Pre-qualification documents were ignored, clause-wise technical marking was never published, and financial bids were opened first, and only then were technical scores back-calculated to ensure the Gujarat-based vendor emerged as L1." She added, "This is not an isolated case of bureaucratic oversight; it's part of the BJP's larger conspiracy to hijack the electoral process.
They earlier attempted voter fraud by duplicating EPIC numbers and bringing in ghost voters from BJP-ruled states, as highlighted by CM Mamata Banerjee."
"They have now shifted focus to capturing surveillance mechanisms like webcasting. This is a blatant misuse of the EC machinery to influence the outcome of elections in favour of the BJP," she added.
The minister said, "We demand that the EC acts as a constitutional guardian of democratic values and not as a BJP rubber stamp. We call upon the commission to ensure that fairness, neutrality, and meritocracy are upheld in every aspect of electoral conduct. If the Election Commission chooses to remain silent, it will be complicit in the erosion of democracy."
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