Kolkata: The West Bengal Pradesh Youth Congress has suspended 26 office-bearers, including six district presidents, three days after they skipped the party's high-profile Ramlila Maidan protest in Delhi, reports said on Wednesday.

Source: Nation Press (Kolkata)

The suspended functionaries had failed to attend the INDIA bloc's November 1 rally at Ramlila Maidan in Delhi — the opposition's 'Vote Bachao, Desh Bachao' mobilisation against alleged vote theft, at which Congress and other opposition leaders targeted Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.

26Bengal office-bearers suspended
6District presidents among them
215Suspended across IYC units nationwide

Part of a nationwide IYC crackdown

The Bengal order is one piece of a wider disciplinary drive by the Indian Youth Congress (IYC) national leadership, which has suspended 215 office-bearers across seven state units — Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Telangana, Himachal Pradesh and Haryana — and the Uttar Pradesh Central unit for failing to attend the rally, with the suspensions remaining in effect until further notice.

Source: The Unmute

According to the IYC, the leadership viewed the absences as a breach of organisational discipline during a major national event. Organisational sources said reinstatement would remain subject to dedicated ground-level work and compliance with future leadership directions, and the suspended office-bearers have been asked to explain themselves. Similar state-level action was reported earlier in Madhya Pradesh, where 60 office-bearers were suspended.

The Congress has presented the November 1 rally as a show of opposition unity on electoral integrity. The scale of the suspensions — extending, according to some reports, possibly further in the coming days — has underlined how seriously the party leadership took the absences.