ISLAMABAD
\nAt least seven people were killed and dozens more injured in India on Saturday after clashes over local polls in West Bengal, a state notorious for political violence during election campaigns.
\nIndia\u2019s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has in recent years worked hard to gain a toehold in West Bengal \u2014 ruled by a communist party for much of its history \u2014 to expand its reach beyond its Hindi-speaking northern heartlands.
\nVoters are currently casting their ballots in a fierce contest to elect municipal leaders, with more than 200,000 candidates across the state of 104 million people.
\n\u201cSeven people have been killed and dozens wounded in poll-related violence in different villages across the state,\u201d Jawed Shamim, additional director general of West Bengal\u2019s police force told.
\nAnother police official, requesting anonymity as they were not authorised to speak to the media, said five of the dead were from the state\u2019s ruling Trinamool Congress party.
\nThe other two were affiliated with the BJP and West Bengal\u2019s Communist Party of India (Marxist).
\nFootage aired by local broadcasters showed rival party workers roaming streets with batons, as well as ballot boxes snatched and set alight outside polling stations.
\nOther voting booths saw a heavy security presence with paramilitary troops standing guard to keep order.
\nMore than 200 crude bombs \u2014 a staple of West Bengal elections that are sold cheaply on the black market to maim or intimidate voters \u2014 had also been seized during the polls, police said.
\nWest Bengal has been ruled by Trinamool leader Mamata Banerjee since 2011 when her party defeated the Communist-led administration that had ruled the state for the prior three decades.
\nBanerjee, a fierce critic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has accused his Hindu nationalist BJP of attempting to import divisive sectarian politics into the state, which has a large Muslim minority.
\nModi has in turn accused her administration of endemic corruption.
\nBut the roots of political violence in the state stretch back decades, with police recording thousands of murders around election time since the 1960s.
\nDuring state polls in 2021 \u2014 won emphatically by Trinamool but with a strong BJP showing \u2014 several activists from both parties were shot or hacked to death, their bodies sometimes hung from trees as an intimidation tactic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ISLAMABAD At least seven people were killed and dozens more injured in India on Saturday after clashes over local polls in West Bengal, a state notorious for political violence during election campaigns. India\u2019s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has in recent years worked hard to gain a toehold in West Bengal \u2014 ruled by a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":342121,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-342104","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n