The fire started on the second floor. By the time it stopped, it had skipped to the eighth and ninth — and destroyed 4,000 EVMs stored there.
The intermediate floors were largely untouched.
That’s the part West Bengal Fire Minister Kaushik Chowdhury couldn’t square with an accidental blaze. Surveying the ten-storey South 24 Parganas Zilla Parishad building in Alipore, he said the trajectory didn’t align with a standard electrical or structural fire. An FIR is now lodged at Alipore Police Station. A Special Investigation Team is on the case. Forensic specialists are pulling soot samples and electronic logs from a structure still too hot to fully enter.
The 10 Constituencies These Machines Held
The destroyed EVMs — control units, ballot units, VVPATs — were used across 10 assembly constituencies in April’s West Bengal election. The one the BJP just won, ending Mamata Banerjee’s tenure.
Two months ago. The new government is three weeks old.
And petitions challenging the result are still live in court. The Supreme Court called Bengal out on institutional breakdown just weeks before the vote. Various stakeholders had specifically approached the judiciary to preserve election machinery and CCTV footage from this exact window.
That machinery is now a pile of soot.
Whoever Benefits, Bengal Loses
Pick your conspiracy. The losing side wanted to erase evidence of rigging they say cost them the state. The winning side wanted to head off recounts before the petitions ripened. Both arguments are already loose on Bengal Twitter, and the SIT hasn’t taken a single statement yet to confirm or rule out sabotage.
The political backdrop makes restraint impossible. TMC is bleeding — 23 Lok Sabha MPs reportedly courting a rebel bloc, Firhad Hakim out as Kolkata mayor, an FIR against Mamata for “provocative” speech. The new Suvendu Adhikari cabinet has reopened the RG Kar files. A BJP aide was shot dead the eve of the swearing-in.
Now physical evidence from a contested election is ash on the eighth floor.
A fire that jumped six floors in a Kolkata government building. Two months of impossible timing. Zero explanations that don’t sound political. The SIT will report something. Bengal will believe what it already believes.