While Mamata Banerjee camped at the Bhawanipur strong room on Thursday evening, Suvendu Adhikari visited the complex on Friday

Kolkata: As Trinamool Congress and BJP traded allegations and counter-allegations over the security of EVM strongrooms on Friday, a delegation from CM Mamata Banerjee’s party met Election Commission officials and sought answers over the alleged CCTV blackout and sealed rooms being opened without party representatives.The BJP dismissed the complaints as a desperate search for an “excuse” by a party headed for defeat, setting the stage for a tense counting day on May 4.The sharpest allegation came from TMC’s Shyampukur candidate Shashi Panja, who told reporters after meeting Election Commission officials that her party had “reason to suspect” about the people captured on camera entering the strongroom of the Khudiram Anusilan Center in central Kolkata.“In the footage of camera number 17, we saw people inside the strongroom, which was sealed in the presence of our agents. If you are opening the door, all parties should be informed about it,” Panza said. He said pink postal ballot envelopes were visible in the footage and no political party representative was there when the seal was broken.Panja also questioned the Election Commission’s statement that all parties were emailed about the sorting of postal ballots to be held at 4 pm on Thursday. “If anyone from either party had been there we would not have said anything. No one was present. Then why did you break the seal and open that particular room?” He said. “The moment we, from TMC, saw human activity there, it became a kind of panic situation.”Panja, Mayor Firhad Hakim and Councilor Ashim Bose also sought a comprehensive report from the Election Commission on the alleged CCTV malfunction in strongrooms across Bengal, concise and unedited recordings with detailed logs of all disruption periods and unrestricted access of authorized representatives to the monitoring feed.The visit to the Election Commission office followed a meeting between Mamata and TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee at her Kalighat home. They had camped at the Bhawanipur EVM strongroom the previous evening, triggering a protest by the BJP, which culminated in a brawl with TMC members and supporters.Mamata and Abhishek called an emergency online meeting at 4 pm on Saturday with TMC counting agents from all the 291 seats where they have fielded their candidates.Leader of the opposition in the state, Suvendu Adhikari, who is also the BJP candidate from Bhawanipur, posted a CCTV footage of the area outside the strongroom of Sakhawat Memorial School in south Kolkata on hisSuvendu visited the strongroom on Friday evening and described it as a “routine job” which did not require cameras following him.BJP’s Dilip Ghosh was blunt. He said, “TMC is now confident of its defeat. They are trying to shift the focus by staying in the strongroom. They are complaining about everything. This is a clear indication that TMC is losing.” Ghosh accused TMC of deploying goons to rig the elections.