Hours after voting in by-elections for the Asansol parliamentary seat commenced in the state of West Bengal on Tuesday, violence broke out at polling stations in the area.
BJP candidate Agnimitra Paul alleged that people from the ruling party TMC hurled stones at her convoy.
"TMC workers thrashed our security personnel with bamboo sticks. No matter how hard [state chief] Mamata Banerjee tries, the BJP will win here [Asansol]", said Agnimitra Paul, who is contesting against TMC's Shatrughan Sinha in the by-poll. "They are not allowing our polling agents to sit in polling booths. TMC goons ransacked my car. Now they have blocked cars of media persons".
Polling was necessitated after BJP politician Babul Supriyo resigned from this seat and joined the TMC last year.
Meanwhile, polling for the Ballygunge assembly seat also began amid tight security arrangements this morning.
Voting began at 7 a.m. (Indian Standard Time) today and will continue until 6:30 p.m. The results will be announced on Saturday.
Asansol, a metropolitan city, has around 1.5 million voters, while Ballygunge, a locality of South Kolkata, has around 250,000 voters.
The occurrence of violence during polls in West Bengal appears to be a common incident.
The Election Commission of India has identified 650 polling booths as sensitive out of 2,012 in Asansol. All 300 polling booths in Ballygunge have been identified as sensitive.
Around 130 companies of central security forces have been deployed for the polls.