Assembly Election 2021 voting percentage LIVE Updates: Polling will be held till 6.30 pm at 14,480 polling stations
Assembly Election 2021 voting percentage LATEST News and Updates: Assembly Election 2021 voting percentage LIVE Updates: Polling will be held till 6.30 pm at 14,480 polling stations
Over 1.03 crore voters are set to cast their votes in 43 constituencies across four districts of West Bengal in the sixth of the eight phases of the Assembly election.
Polling will be held from 7 am to 6.30 pm at 14,480 polling stations in 17 constituencies in the North 24 Parganas district, nine each in Nadia and Uttar Dinajpur districts and eight in Purba Bardhaman district.
Of the total voters, 53.21 lakh are men, 50.65 lakh are women while 256 belong to the third gender. The EC has decided to deploy 1,071 companies of Central security forces in the sixth phase to ensure free and fair polling.
An Election Commission official told news agency PTI that security has been beefed up in light of the violence in the previous phases, particularly the death of five people in Cooch Behar in the fourth phase of polling on 10 April.
The poll panel will also put in place measures to ensure strict adherence to COVID-19
protocols during the voting process, the official said.
The fifth phase of the Assembly polls on 17 April had seen a voter turnout of 78.36 percent by 5 pm.
Altogether 306 candidates including BJP's national vice president Mukul Roy, senior Trinamool Congress leaders and ministers Jyotipriya Mallick and Chandrima Bhattacharya, and CPM leader Tanmay Bhattacharya are in the fray.
Film director Raj Chakraborty and actress Koushani Mukherjee, who were fielded by the ruling TMC, are also trying their electoral luck.
This phase will witness stiff competition between the ruling Trinamool Congress and its main rival BJP.
The spotlight is on the Matua bastions of Bongaon and Krishnanagar, close to the India-Bangladesh border. Both the BJP and the TMC have attempted to woo the Matuas, who make for a large chunk of the state's Scheduled Caste population.
The Matuas have been migrating to West Bengal since the 1950s, primarily due to religious persecution in erstwhile East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Apart from the implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), two other aspects — identity politics and regional development — have also surfaced as decisive factors this election.
The saffron party's campaign was led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, BJP chief JP Nadda and Bollywood star Mithun Chakraborty. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee spearheaded the TMC campaign along with her nephew and party's youth wing chief Abhishek Banerjee.
In view of rising coronavirus cases in the state, the EC had reduced the daily campaigning hours and extended the silence period from 48 hours to 72 hours in each of the remaining three phases of the Assembly polls.
The seventh and eighth phase of polls are slated to be held on 26 and 29 April while the counting of votes will be held on 2 May.
