NEW DELHI, May 7 (Reuters) – Hundreds of people were arrested after post-election violence erupted this week in an eastern Indian state, killing at least three people, including the aide to a senior leader of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.
Here are some details.
• Modi’s BJP defeated incumbent Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) in the election in West Bengal state, where she has held power since 2011.
• Banerjee has refused to resign, saying she has “not been defeated” and accusing the Election Commission of colluding with the BJP to win the election.
• More than 200 criminal cases have been registered across the state for the violence and 433 people have been arrested, police chief Siddh Nath Gupta told reporters on Wednesday.
• BJP has accused the TMC of carrying out “targeted assassinations”.
• TMC has condemned the violence that it says is being carried out by “BJP-backed miscreants”.
• West Bengal has a history of post-election violence, and about a dozen people were killed during similar clashes between political parties after results were declared during the previous polls in 2021.
(Reporting by Sakshi Dayal and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
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