Kolkata, 26 April (HS). The voting process for the second phase of elections has started from 7:00 am on Friday for 88 Lok Sabha seats in 13 states across the country. West Bengal also has three Lok Sabha seats in it. In West Bengal, the electoral fate of 47 candidates including the state president of BJP is at stake. The sitting MPs in all three Lok Sabha constituencies Raiganj, Darjeeling and Balurghat are from BJP.
Of the three constituencies, security arrangements are highest in Raiganj constituency of North Dinajpur district. This time the BJP candidate in Raiganj is Karthik Paul, who has replaced the sitting Lok Sabha member from the constituency, Devashree Chaudhary. Paul’s nearest rivals are Krishna Kaly. of Trinamool Congress and Ali Imran Ramz alias Victor of Congress. This time there are a total of 20 candidates in Raiganj, out of which 19 are men and one woman. Raiganj has maximum 418 sensitive booths.
In Darjeeling, Trinamool Congress has fielded former bureaucrat Gopal Lama, BJP has fielded its sitting MP Raju Bisht and Congress has fielded Munish Tamang. Bishnu Prasad Sharma, the sitting BJP MLA from Kurseong assembly constituency, is contesting the elections as an independent candidate from Darjeeling this time after not getting the ticket. This time there are a total of 14 candidates in Darjeeling, out of which 12 are men and two are women. The number of sensitive booths in Darjeeling is 408.
In Balurghat, the main rivals against BJP’s sitting Lok Sabha MP and state party president Sukant Majumdar are Trinamool Congress’s minister of state Biplab Mitra and Revolutionary Socialist Party’s (RSP) Joydeb Siddhant. This time there are a total of 13 candidates in Balurghat and all are men. The number of sensitive booths in Darjeeling is 308.
According to records of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) office of West Bengal, there are currently 299 comp.es of Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) in West Bengal, of which 272 comp.es are deployed for the three constituencies on Friday. The rest have been kept in reserve. 12 thousand 983 state police personnel have also been deployed. Raiganj has the highest deployment of CAPFs with 111 comp.es, followed by 88 comp.es in Darjeeling and 73 comp.es in Balurghat. Voting has started at 7 am on Friday and will continue till 6 pm.
