West Bengal polls: 32 million voters to decide fate of 1.4k candidates today in phase 2 of voting

E-PaperSubscribeSubscribeEnjoy unlimited accessSubscribe Now! Get features like Roughly 32.1 million electors will decide the fate of 1,448 candidates on Wednesday when 142 assembly constituencies across seven districts in West Bengal go into polls in the second phase of assembly elections. Of the 294 assembly seats in the state, 152 constituencies went to polls in the first phase on April 23. The seats that go to the polls on Tuesday are largely in the Trinamool Congress bastion of south Bengal. This marks the completion of voting for the current election season in West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Assam and Puducherry. Votes for all five regions will be counted on May 4. Prime Minister Narendra Modi held 19 rallies in Bengal since March 15 and home minister Amit Shah was in the state from April 21 to 27. All chief ministers of BJP-ruled states and seven cabinet ministers campaigned extensively. Chief minister Mamata Banerjee held 111 rallies across the state and her last campaign event was in her assembly seat of Bhabanipur in South Kolkata where she is being challenged by the Leader of the Opposition in the state assembly, Suvendu Adhikari.Opposition leaders such as Jharkhand chief minister Hemant Soren, Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal and Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav campaigned for the TMC. Track live updates of voting in West Bengal here Apart from the TMC and the BJP, the Congress and the Left Front are also in fray in most of the constituencies. In 2011, when Mamata Banerjee came to power ousting the 34-year-old Left Front government, the TMC had bagged 117 of the 142 seats that go to the polls on Tuesday. The BJP -- which was a marginal force in the state -- didn’t win a single seat back then. In the 2016 assembly polls, the TMC further consolidated its position, winning 125 seats. In 2021, the TMC bagged 123 seats and the BJP 18 . The Indian Secular Front won one seat. The seats that go to polls include Matua strongholds in North 24 Parganas and Nadia, Kolkata and its suburbs, border districts, the industrial belt and the riverine islands of the Sunderbans. Of the 41,000-odd polling stations where voting will be held on Tuesday, around 14,000 are in urban areas. Of these, 8,845 stations are managed fully by women and 13 by disabled polling personnel. 107 are general assembly constituencies, 34 are reserved for Scheduled Caste and one is reserved for Scheduled Tribes. The Special Intensive Revision had a big impact in the districts going to polls in the second phase. More than 50,000 names were deleted from Bhabanipur alone in the three stages of SIR – draft roll, final roll and adjudication. Political clashes, primarily between the TMC and the BJP, were reported from multiple pockets on Sunday and Monday before the curtain came down on the election campaign for the second phase on Monday. More than 100 crude bombs were recovered. Election Commission said that cash, liquor and jewellery, among other items, worth more than ₹500 crore were seized since March 15, when election dates were announced and the Model Code of Conduct came into force. In 2021, inducements worth around ₹339 crores were seized. “We are more prepared for the second phase of elections compared to the first phase because the area in the second phase is smaller. In the first phase there were 152 seats spread across 16 districts. In phase two there are 142 seats (spread across eight districts). We will have better area-domination this time. We have a tried and tested machinery. We will introduce a few changes. We will hold a free, fair and violence-free polls. Even ahead of phase-1, a few sporadic incidents had taken place, but the polling day was largely peaceful,” said Manoj Kumar Agarwal, chief electoral officer of West Bengal. Joydeep Thakur is a Special Correspondent based in Kolkata. He focuses on science, environment, wildlife, agriculture and other related issues.