Adhir alleges harassment of Cong workers by cops to affect poll prospects

West Bengal Congress chief and Baharampur Lok Sabha seat candidate Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury on Wednesday shot off a letter to Chief Election Commission Rajiv Kumar, seeking his intervention into alleged harassment of party workers by policemen with an "intention to affect the party's poll prospects".

Chowdhury, in his two-page letter, alleged that two police officers in Baharampur have been harassing Congress workers, "implicating them on false and frivolous charges, with an intention to affect the party's prospects in the Lok Sabha elections".

"I am writing to bring to your attention and seek your immediate intervention to put an end to the blatant acts of misuse of the law by the law enforcement agencies themselves in implicating persons affiliated to the Congress on false and frivolous charges with the obvious intention to mar the party's electoral prospects," he said in the letter.

The Congressman also highlighted a couple of alleged incidents and said that they were "systematically planned" aimed at demoralising party workers, and "hindering my election campaign".

"... in these blatantly dirty acts of misuse of the law to harass, and implicate Congress workers to demoralise and stall my election campaign," he said urging the poll body to replace the officers immediately.

Chowdhury, the leader of the Congress in Lok Sabha, seeks a sixth straight term from the seat, where he is pitted against cricketer-turned-politician Yusuf Pathan of the Trinamool Congress.