E-Paper
Bengal civic polls: Counting of votes tomorrow
The civic body elections were earlier scheduled to take place on January 22 but got delayed due to the worsening Covid-19 situation across India fuelled by the Omicron variant. Elections were finally held on February 27 with nearly 95 lakh people exercising their franchise to decide the fate of more than 8,000 candidates.
The counting of votes for 108 civic bodies in West Bengal will take place on Wednesday. The civic body elections were earlier scheduled to take place on January 22 but got delayed due to the worsening Covid-19 situation across India fuelled by the Omicron variant. Elections were finally held on February 27 with nearly 95 lakh people exercising their franchise to decide the fate of more than 8,000 candidates. The top contenders this time were the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC), the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the CPIM-led Left Front and Congress.
Polling started at 7 am in 2,171 wards of the 108 civic bodies and went on till 5 pm. Tight security arrangements were in place to avoid any incidents of violence. A total of 44,000 police personnel were deployed, with at least one armed police in every booth.
However, sporadic violence was seen during the elections, including an attack on police personnel and ransacking electronic voter machines (EVMs).
The opposition BJP called for a 12-hour bandh across West Bengal on Monday from 6 am to 6 pm to protest violence during. But the shutdown failed to evoke any satisfactory response from the public.
Transportation was usual and the majority of commercial establishments in the state's southern region remained open.
During the bandh, BJP workers were seen blocking railway tracks, roads in several places including Hooghly. They also blocked roads in Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari's Nandigram constituency in the Purba Medinipur district.
Workers of the the BJP clashed with police personnel on Monday and some of them were arrested.
Meanwhile, the Mamata Banerjee-ruled state government slammed the bandh as it “disrupts normal life and causes inconvenience to people and affects their livelihood.”
