Left: Derek O’Brien; Right: CEC Gyanesh Kumar

NEW DELHI: A meeting between a delegation of the Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the Election Commission (EC) turned tense on Wednesday, with both sides trading sharply conflicting accounts of what transpired.According to sources in the poll body, TMC leader Derek O’Brien allegedly raised his voice during the interaction and told the Chief Election Commissioner not to speak.“Trinamool Congress meeting lasted barely a few minutes. EC sources said Trinamool MP Derek O Brien shouted at the Election Commission and asked CEC not to speak,” EC sources said.They further claimed that Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar had to intervene to restore order. “CEC Gyanesh Kumar requested Derek O Brien to maintain decorum of the Commission room, telling him that ‘shouting and indecent behaviour is not appropriate’,” the sources added.However, TMC leaders rejected the allegations outright, calling them “false” and challenged the ECI to make public a record of the meeting.Speaking to reporters, O’Brien gave a contrasting account of the brief interaction. “Today, we went to the Chief Election Commissioner. He told us ‘get lost’ within 7 minutes of the meeting. The meeting started at 10:02 AM and ended at 10:07 AM… When we told him that you are transferring officials, and how you would want to conduct a free and fair election? And then he said, leave from here… What I saw today is a shame. I challenge the Election Commissioner to release the video or audio of what happened today,” he said.Backing him, TMC MP Saket Gokhale termed the EC’s version “a lie”.“This is a LIE. I was personally present at the meeting. NOTHING like this was said. All that CEC Gyanesh Kumar said to us was ‘GET LOST’. We challenge the ECI to release a transcript of the meeting. Else we will do it,” Gokhale said in a post on X.TMC leader Sagarika Ghose also dismissed the EC’s claims.“False. A blatant lie. None of this was said to the four member delegation. Two lines were said to us by the Chief Election Commissioner… The first line: where is your authorised signatory. And the second most SHAMEFUL two words: GET LOST,” she said on X.The confrontation comes against the backdrop of escalating tensions between the opposition and the Election Commission ahead of the West Bengal assembly elections.Earlier this week, Om Birla and C. P. Radhakrishnan rejected separate notices moved by opposition parties seeking the removal of the CEC. The notices, submitted in March, cited allegations including “partisan and discriminatory conduct in office”, “deliberate obstruction of investigation of electoral fraud”, and “mass disenfranchisement”.In their respective orders, both presiding officers held that the charges did not meet the constitutional threshold required to initiate removal proceedings, noting a lack of prima facie evidence of misbehaviour.

Polling for the 294-member West Bengal assembly will be held in two phases on April 23 and April 29, with counting scheduled for May 4. In the 2021 assembly elections, the TMC secured a landslide victory with 213 seats, while the BJP won 77. The Congress and the Left Front failed to win any seats.