KOLKATA, July 8, 2023 (BSS/AFP) - At least seven people were killed and 
dozens more injured in India Saturday after clashes over local polls in West 
Bengal, a state notorious for political violence during election campaigns.

India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has in recent years worked hard 
to gain a toehold in West Bengal -- ruled by a communist party for much of 
its history -- to expand its reach beyond its Hindi-speaking northern 
heartlands.

Voters are currently casting their ballots in a fierce contest to elect 
municipal leaders, with more than 200,000 candidates across the state of 104 
million people.
 
"Seven people have been killed and dozens wounded in poll-related violence in 
different villages across the state," Jawed Shamim, additional director 
general of West Bengal's police force, told AFP.

Another police official, requesting anonymity as they were not authorised to 
speak to the media, said five of the dead were from the state's ruling 
Trinamool Congress party.

The other two were affiliated with the BJP and West Bengal's Communist Party 
of India (Marxist). 

Footage aired by local broadcasters showed rival party workers roaming 
streets with batons, as well as ballot boxes snatched and set alight outside 
polling stations.

Other voting booths saw a heavy security presence with paramilitary troops 
standing guard to keep order.

More than 200 crude bombs -- a staple of West Bengal elections that are sold 
cheaply on the black market to maim or intimidate voters -- had also been 
seized during the polls, police said.

West Bengal has been ruled by Trinamool leader Mamata Banerjee since 2011, 
when her party defeated the Communist-led administration that had ruled the 
state for the prior three decades. 

Banerjee, a fierce critic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has accused his 
Hindu nationalist BJP of attempting to import divisive sectarian politics 
into the state, which has a large Muslim minority.

Modi has in turn accused her administration of endemic corruption.

But the roots of political violence in the state stretch back decades, with 
police recording thousands of murders around election time since the 1960s.