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LS polls: Sporadic clashes mar polling in Bengal; 74.6% turnout recorded
Till around 5pm, the overall voter turnout in the seven Lok Sabha seats was recorded at 73%.
Reports of sporadic clashes were reported from pockets in some of the seven Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal where elections were held in the fifth phase on Monday.
Sporadic violence reported in pockets of West Bengal; Sandeshkhali remains tense
Till around 5pm, the overall voter turnout in the seven Lok Sabha seats – Arambagh, Bongaon, Hooghly, Barrackpore, Howrah, Uluberia and Serampore – was registered at 73%. While Arambagh in Hooghly district with 76.9% registered the highest turnout, Howrah and Barrackpore both registered 68.8%, which was the lowest.
“Voting was largely peaceful with no reports of any major untoward incidents. There are some reports of sporadic violence. Till around 5pm, the turnout was 73%,” said an Election Commission of India (ECI) official.
Around 12 million voters would decide the fate of 88 candidates including some high-profile leaders such as sitting MPs Kalyan Banerjee, Arjun Singh, Shantanu Thakur and Locket Chatterjee, state minister Partha Bhowmick and actor-turned-politician Rachna Banerjee.
With elections in the seven seats primarily witnessing a bipolar contest between the ruling-Trinamool Congress (TMC) and its arch rival the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), clashes erupted in multiple pockets since morning.
Clashes were reported at Arambagh where a local TMC leader was injured and from Khanakul where a BJP panchayat leader was injured. Both are in Hooghly district. Clashes also broke out at Uluberia and Salkia in Howrah district.
At Lilulah in Howrah, a presiding officer named Goutam Manna alleged that he was assaulted.
“It is a crime if the presiding officer has been assaulted. Police will take action against whosoever has done this,” said Arup Roy, state minister.
Swapan Banerjee, brother of chief minister Mamata Banerjee, couldn’t cast his vote as his name was deleted from the voter list in Howrah.“I feel disheartened that I couldn’t cast my vote this time. I have voted in every election. I feel sad that I failed to exercise my voting rights. I was a voter of ward 37 in central Howrah,” he told the media.
More than 50% of the polling booths in the fifth phase have been declared sensitive. In the fourth phase, around 23% were declared sensitive. More than 650 companies of central forces have been deployed in the fifth phase.
At Titagarh in Barrackpore Lok Sabha seat in North 24 Parganas, TMC workers stopped BJP candidate Arjun Singh from entering a polling station and staged protests.
“I got the information that votes were being looted in a booth. When I rushed there, local criminals started shouting slogans. I am not the person to flee,” said Singh.
Allegations of molesting local women surfaced against two central force personnel at Jangipara in Hooghly and Uluberia in Howrah on Sunday. In a video which surfaced on social media, local residents of Jangipara could be seen purportedly beating the accused who was tied to a tree.
“We have registered a case under Section 354 (outraging modesty) against the accused on the basis of a complaint,” said a police officer.
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The TMC stepped up its attack against the BJP-ruled Centre over the allegations against the central forces.
“When Prime Minister Narendra Modi was giving a speech on Nari Shakti on Sunday, central force personnel were outraging the modesty of women. Were the central forces sent to West Bengal for this purpose? The PM held two rallies on Monday but didn’t say a word,” said Chandrima Bhattacharya, state minister.
