West Bengal Assembly election: 62 seats at stake in Phase 3 today

The third phase of the six-phase Assembly election in Bengal will be held in 62 constituencies, including seven seats in Kolkata, on Thursday. A total of 1,37,13,594 voters, including 65,79,331 women, will exercise their franchise in 16,461 polling stations, spread over Murshidabad, Nadia, Burdwan districts and North Kolkata, to decide the fate of 418 candidates, including 34 female who are in the fray. Out of the 62 constituencies, 22 are in Murshidabad, 17 in Nadia, 16 in Burdwan and seven in Kolkata (North).

Seven out of 11 constituencies in Kolkata will go to polls in the third phase. The rest of the four constituencies will go to polls in the fifth phase, which will be held on April 30.

Polling will be held between 7 am to 6 pm. Over 700 companies of Central paramilitary forces (CPF) and 25,000 state police personnel will be deployed for this phase. CPF will be deployed in all polling premises and lathi-wielding state personnel will facilitate queue management outside the polling booths.

In the third phase, the EC has deployed 1,283 sector force teams, 194 mobile response teams, 190 flying squads and 197 static surveillance teams. “Naka” (check) points have been created at 220 places across the four districts. Besides this, webcasting, videography and digital cameras are being used in many critical polling stations to monitor the situation. Armed with cameras and GPS systems, more than 20 vehicles will do surveillance of critical areas as part of a live monitoring system exercise.

The EC has identified 3,401 hamlets in the third phase as vulnerable. Based on complaints received, 6,095 voters have been identified as vulnerable after which action has been taken by 4,094 trouble mongers. There will be 274 model polling stations, while 436 polling stations will be entirely run by females. Of the 418 candidates, 61 are crorepatis, 80 have criminal cases against them, with 65 of them declared serious criminal offences like murder and rape against their name.

Among the major candidates in this phase are state ministers and Trinamul contestants Sashi Panja, Sadhan Pandey, Subrata Saha, former state minister and CPI-M candidates Anisur Rahaman and Debesh Das, Congress legislature party leader Mohammad Sohrab, former state party president Somen Mitra, former state BJP president and party national secretary Rahul Sinha, state BJP secretary Ritesh Tiwari and retired IPS officer Nazrul Islam.

So far, voters in 105 of the total 294 constituencies have exercised their franchise in the first two phases which were held on April 4 (1a), April 11 (1b) and April 17 (2). Polling for the remaining phases will be held on April 25, 30 and May 5.