Kolkata: Bypolls for six assembly seats in Bengal will take place on Wednesday, with webcasting at all 1,583 polling stations. There is a close male-female ratio this time — among the 15.2 lakh voters likely to participate, 7.6 lakh are male and 7.5 lakh female.
Of the over 11,000 home voters, only 2,003 (17.8%) exercised the option, indicating the possibility of a low turnout.
In Cooch Behar's Sitai, the contest is between Trinamool's Sangita Roy and BJP's Dipak Kumar Roy. There is also a candidate from Kamtapur People's Party (United) in the fray. There are 1.5 lakh male voters to 1.4 lakh female voters in the constituency.
Madarihat — which was earlier won by BJP's Manoj Tigga — is now a prestige fight for the party. Female voters number 1.1 lakh while male voters number 1 lakh; there are 5 voters from the transgender community. The electoral fight is mainly between Joy Prakash Toppo of Trinamool and Rahul Lohar of BJP, though RSP also has a candidate.
In Naihati, there are 97,753 female voters and over 96,000 male ones. Rupak Mitra is BJP's candidate while Sanat Dey is Trinamool's.
In Haroa in North 24 Parganas, male and female voters number 1.3 lakh each, as is the case in Midnapore with 1.4 lakh each. In Haroa, BJP's Bimal Das and TMC's Sk Rabiul Islam will be battling it out, while in Midnapore, the contest is between TMC's Sujoy Hazra and BJP's Subhajit Roy.
In Taldangra, there are 1.2 lakh male voters to 1.1 lakh female voters. Trinamool's Falguni Sinhababu and BJP's Ananya Roy Chakraborty are in the fray.