State BJP general secretary Rahul Sinha told a press conference here today that of these 700 seats, other Opposition parties like the Congress and the Trinamool Congress were also not allowed to field candidates for about 200 seats. The State BJP is also planning to request Union Home Minister L K Advani to send a Central observers's team, like the one that was sent to Tamil Nadu, to make an on-the-spot study of the Marxist ``terror'' in the panchayat poll campaign.

The BJP leadership, which met the new West Bengal Governor, AR Kidwai, last Thursday to complain about the Left Front's ``misrule'', has alleged that six of its workers had been killed in clashes related to the panchayat polls. The Trinamool Congress leaders, who alsomet the Governor last Wednesday, complained that 11 of its supporters had been killed in the run-up to the polls.

The BJP has also demanded deployment of paramilitary forces for the polls. Rahul Sinha said that the polls could not be free and fair if conducted with home guards. There are about 45,000 booths for the panchayat polls.Meanwhile, the BJP's central observer, Kailashpati Mishra, who brokered a truce between the BJP and the TC for the polls at the behest of Advani, today issued an appeal to his party workers asking them to avoid fights with TC candidates.

According to Sinha, the two parties managed to ensure joint fights against the Left candidates in about 80% of the gram panchayat and panchayat samiti seats. But zilla parishad seats continued to pose problems for the parties even after the last day of withdrawal of nominations today.

But reports from the districts seemed to contradict Sinha's claim and suggest that the two parties would fight each other in several thousand seats. Theelections will be held for a total of 58,430 seats.

Yesterday, the TC complained that even after Kailashpati Mishra's mediation, BJP nominees had not withdrawn from many areas within Mamata Banerjee's Lok Sabha constituency. Mamata has again threatened to raise the issue with Advani when she goes to Delhi next week. But she is otherwise happy that the CPI(M) would not get a walkover in half the seats it had won unopposed last time. In 1993, the Marxists won nearly 12,600 such seats.