Left Front announces candidates for Assembly by-election

The by-elections will be held in Nalhati in Birbhum district, English Bazar in Malda district and Rejinagar in Murshidabad district.

"While Dipak Chatterjee of the Forward Bloc will fight from the Nalhati seat, Kaushik Mishra of the CPI(M) will contest from English Bazar and Sirajul Islam Mondal of the RSP in Rejinagar," Left Front chairman Biman Bose said.

The Nalhati Assembly seat fell vacant after its MLA Abhijit Mukherjee, son of President Pranab Mukherjee, quit his seat to fight the Lok Sabha by-election from Jangipur.

English Bazar and Rejinagar seats fell vacant after their MLAs Krishnendu Choudhury and Humayun Kabir resigned as MLAs to join the Trinamool Congress.

The Congress and Trinamool Congress are yet to announce their candidates for the seats.

Apprehending large-scale violence in the run-up to the upcoming Panchayet polls, Bose demanded that the local elections be conducted in three phases.

"We want the elections to be held in three phases as both the number of voters and booths have increased in the Panchayat areas and secondly, we also feel that there will be violence to prevent opposition parties from fielding their candidates," Bose said while reminding that the 2008 Panchayat polls had been held in three phases.

The veteran leader also came down on Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for conducting a party rally at Metro channel in central Kolkata at a time when other political parties had been been restricted from holding rallies there.