Kolkata: Sayantan Basu, the Bharatiya Janata Party candidate for West Bengal’s Basirhat Lok Sabha seat on Tuesday, embroiled into a controversy over his comments that people who try to capture booth in national elections should be shot to death.

Referring to the instances of alleged Trinamool workers scaring aspirants away from election centres on nomination day in the West Bengal panchayat election, Basu said in case rivals cause trouble on polling day, he will instruct the paramilitary forces to open fire on them and “shoot to kill”.

In a party event in Basirhat, Basu said, “If goons try to capture booths on polling day, I will tell the CRPF that their bullets must go through the heart and not at the feet. This is a fight to save democracy”.

“I am telling BJP workers, don’t cry if you are thrashed. Simply hit back. Don’t beat up innocent people and the poor, but don’t leave the troublemakers. You will die only once. Kill those who come to kill you before you die,” BJP Basirhat hope who is also a general secretary for the party in Bengal, added.

Famous actor Nusrat Jahan is Trinamool Congress candidate from the Basirhat constituency, a constituency from which the party had won in the fifteenth as well as sixteenth Lok Sabha elections. Haji Nurul Islam and Idris Ali had respectively won here in the two elections.

West Bengal will vote in all the seven phases for the Lok Sabha elections 2019, the first phase is set to take place on April 11.

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