Record breaking voting in West Bengal: Votes rained in the second phase, the average of both the phases crossed 92%!

Kolkata : A record 91.62 percent voters exercised their franchise on Wednesday in the second phase of assembly elections in West Bengal amid heavy security arrangements. With this, voting has been completed on all 294 seats in the state. In the first phase on April 23, 93.19 percent voters had cast their votes on 152 seats. In this way, the overall voting in both the phases was 92.47 percent, which is a new record so far.

Counting of votes for both phases will take place on May 4. The Election Commission has said that this is the highest turnout in the state since independence. The Commission has expressed gratitude to the voters for their enthusiastic participation in the voting. In the second phase, voting for 142 seats started at 7 am and voters were standing in queues at many places till 6 pm. In this phase, participation of women was more than that of men. The voting percentage of women was 92.28 while that of men was 91.07.

Apart from tension at some places due to clashes between workers of rival parties and complaints of tampering with electronic voting machines at isolated polling stations, overall voting was conducted peacefully. According to the data received so far from the Election Commission, the highest turnout was in East Bardhaman district at 93.48 percent and the lowest was in Kolkata South district at 87.39 percent.

Apart from this, 91.50 percent voting took place in Hooghly district, 91.17 percent in Howrah, 89.03 percent in Kolkata North, 91.45 percent in Nadia, 91.70 percent in North 24 Parganas, 91.73 percent in South 24 Parganas. The Commission had made elaborate arrangements to keep the voting free from violence and fear and to conduct it in a free and fair manner. Intensive deployment of Central Armed Police Forces was made in sensitive areas. 2,407 companies of central forces were deployed on election duty.

In this phase, voting was also held in Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s constituency Bhawanipur, where she is facing opposition leader in the Legislative Assembly and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate Suvendu Adhikari. Suvendu Adhikari is also contesting from Nandigram seat where voting was held in the first phase. In the last assembly elections, he had defeated Mamata Banerjee from Nandigram seat. The main contest in the state is between the ruling Trinamool Congress and the BJP. Congress and leftist parties are also trying their strength in the electoral arena. Suvendu Adhikari had to face protest in Kalighat area today.

Trinamool Congress workers protested against him and raised slogans of “Jai Bangla”. Suvendu Adhikari said, “Muslims are raising slogans of ‘Jai Bangla’, Hindus are with the BJP.” BJP has alleged EVM tampering at some polling stations in Falta, Bajaj and Dyand Harbor areas.

People became agitated over EVM malfunction at the booths of Don Bosco and Liluah Sohanlal Vidyalaya in Bally assembly constituency of Howrah district and central security forces had to resort to mild lathi charge to control the situation there. There have also been reports of fighting between workers of rival parties at isolated places. There was light rain at some places during the day’s voting. At such places, people were seen carrying umbrellas at polling stations.

There are 1448 candidates in the fray for 142 assembly seats in the second phase of elections. In this phase, after the completion of the voting process at 41001 polling stations (39301 main and 1700 auxiliary polling stations), under the supervision of the candidates’ agents, the EVMs were sealed and transported to the strong rooms set up at the designated places for counting amid tight security arrangements. In this phase, 25083 polling stations were in rural areas and 14218 in urban areas. Of these, there were 258 model polling stations.

In this phase, 8845 polling stations were managed entirely by women. There were a total of more than 3.22 crore voters in this phase, including service voters, which included 1.64 crore males, 1.57 crore females and 792 transgenders. There are a total of 6.44 crore voters in the state.