kolkata chief minister mamata banerjee on thursday urged the election commission to consider holding the remaining election phases in one go in view of the huge surge in covid cases saying it would protect people from further exposure to the virus and adding that she had initially firmly opposed the ecs decision to conduct the polls in eight phasesher plea came on a day rezaul haque alias mantu biswas 46 the congress candidate from shamsherganj murshidabad succumbed to the disease at a kolkata hospital and at a time when several other politicians from a number of parties have been infected bengal itself has continued to record huge spikes in daily cases since latemarch coinciding with the commencement of the eightphase polls earlier in the day before banerjee made this plea from her official twitter handle she told a private tv channel that to keep people safe as a political party and as a human being she would agree to any decision by the ec to club the last three phases of the polls in one day but parties should be allowed seven to eight days campaign timethe next phase of polls are on saturday but the scheduled polls on april 22 26 and 29 can be held on one day i have no problem she said in response to a questionimmediately after the cms appeal the trinamool congress urged prime minister narendra modi and union home minister amit shah to clear their stand on the issue party mp derek obrien tweeted come on modishah bjp we have made our stand clear whats yours more covid19india deaths in 4 phasesin the interview banerjee said at the onset let me be very clear that we did not find any justification for an eightphase poll we had opposed that bihar elections were held during a pandemic even then it was held in three phases there was no need for an eight phase poll in bengal as a political party as a human we have no problem if the last three phases are held in one day but we should be allowed a seveneightday window to campaign for all the remaining phases it can be held around april 26 in one go places where cases are higher will go to polls last as many as 114 assembly segments are scheduled to go to the polls in the last three phases of the elections this includes kolkata which will vote in the last two phasesbanerjee also questioned the centres management of the pandemic the covid cases were showing a gradual decline since last november they the centre had five months to arrange for vaccines it is common knowledge that a pandemic remains for at least two years she said adding i have written to the centre to help us with the vaccines we wanted to purchase vaccines and vaccinate all people i am not saying this would have made the disease go away but the cases would have been much lower what happened