New Delhi, April 9 (IANS): A delegation of Trinamool Congress leaders, who were detained on April 8 from the Election Commission office here, sat on a protest throughout the night in the Mandir Marg police station premises despite police releasing them the same day.

“We released them yesterday but they did not leave,” said a police official.

Police on Monday detained 10 Trinamool Congress (TMC) leaders, including MPs, who sat in protest outside the office of the Election Commission of India (ECI) in the national capital.

The detainees included Trinamool Rajya Sabha MPs Dola Sen, Sagarika Ghose, Saket Gokhale, Derek O'Brien, Mohammed Nadimul Haque, and former MPs Arpita Ghosh and Santanu Sen.

The police action came when a 10-member Trinamool delegation sat on a dharna outside the EC office after meeting a few poll officials.

Before meeting the EC officials, Dola Sen claimed on Monday that the rampant “misuse of central agencies” in West Bengal goes against the principle of a level playing field for all the political parties during any election.

“The Union government is unethically unleashing central agencies like the ED, CBI, and NIA in West Bengal at a time when the Model Code of Conduct is in place. Besides West Bengal, the Union government is also adopting a similar policy in some other states. Many of our workers are being unnecessarily arrested by the NIA,” Sen alleged.