Within 7 minutes of meeting CEC Gyanesh Kumar said 'get lost': TMC's Derek O'Brien

New Delhi: Trinamool Congress (TMC) on Wednesday had an acrimonious meeting with the Election Commission, with the party saying Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar telling them "get lost" at the end as they raised issues and the poll body accusing the party's Rajya Sabha leader Derek O'Brien of "shouting".

A four-member delegation of O'Brien, Sagarika Ghose, Menaka Guruswamy and Saket Gokhale went to the EC at 10 am to raise the issue of the Bengal Chief Electoral Officer and others being accompanied by BJP affiliated functionaries on official visits among other things but the meeting, sources said, that lasted for just seven minutes started and ended on a stormy note.

After the meeting, O'Brien told reporters, "I want to tell you what the CEC told our AITC delegation. Within 7 minutes of the meeting, he told us to 'get lost'. After being told so, we left. We are the second-largest opposition party in Parliament yet this is the conduct we are met with."

The EC on X said, "ECI's straight-talk to Trinamool Congress -- This time, the elections in West Bengal would surely be: fear-free, violence-free, intimidation-free, inducement-free and without any 'chappa', booth jamming and source jamming." Gokhale retorted, "Does this criminal CEC have the guts to tweet saying “straight talk to BJP?"

O'Brien countered by asking the EC to release the video or transcript of the meeting, claiming that the CEC did not say anything like that in the meeting.

"Gyanesh Kumar, you don’t know who you are playing games with...None of what the CEC has said to the media is true, he did not say anything that he claims he did. Unless, of course, he was talking to himself," he said.

EC sources said O'Brien "shouted" at the CEC and two Election Commissioners Vivek Joshi and Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and asked Kumar not to speak.

Sources said the CEC requested O'Brien to maintain decorum of the Commission room and shouting and indecent behaviour is not appropriate.

Trinamool sources said as soon as the delegation entered, the CEC pointed out that the party's authorised representative is not with them to which O'Brien responded that the letter by the authorised person has mentioned in the letter seeking appointment that four people would be coming and if he felt, they are unauthorised, they could walkout.

However, the meeting went ahead during which the delegation handed over the memorandum as well as letters written by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to Kumar.

Sources said O'Brien then went on to say that they live in the hope that there would be a free and fair election while claiming that in the last 8-9 meetings Trinamool leaders had with the EC, both Joshi and Sandhu did not utter a word.

When Kumar said that he would speak if O'Brien had finished speaking, the Trinamool leader said that he would like to congratulate him for being the first CEC to have notices of removal submitted against him in both the Houses.

As the tempers rose, sources said Kumar asked O'Brien not to speak loudly to which the latter said he should not tell him that. Sources claimed Kumar said "thank you, get lost" as the meeting came to a close, to which O'Brien objected to before walking out of the room.