Bengal:Polling underway for seventh phase of assembly elections

The seventh phase of West Bengal assembly election is under progress on Monday without any major untoward incident in 34 assembly segments. Nine assembly segments each of Murshidabad and Paschim Bardhman, six each in Dakshin Dinajpur and Malda and four constituencies in Kolkata South are going to the polls. There are 81,96,242 eligible voters in this phase where 268 candidates are in fray.The election commission has arranged 8634 main and 2742 auxiliary polling booths for the polling purpose. There are 11,376 control units, ballot units and VVPATs provided. There are 26 General Observers, nine expenditure observers and six police observers to monitor the election.

In Bhovanipur, instead of Chief Minister Mamatha Banerjee, TMC senior leader and minister Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay is contesting against actor Rudranil Ghosh of BJP. At Bollygunj a high-profile fight between veteran All India Trinamool Congress  heavyweight and state panchayat minister Subrata Mukherjee and Dr Fuad Halim of the Sanyukta Morcha. The BJP has fielded advocate Lokenath Chatterjee. From Rashbehari seat, Lt Gen (Dr) Subrata Saha of BJP is contesting against TMC's Debasish Kumar. Bharatiya Janata Party has fielded well-known economist and former Chief Economic Advisor Ashok Lahiri as its candidate for the Balurghat assembly constituency in North Bengal's Dakshin Dinajpur district. He has taken on Sekhar Dasgupta of TMC and Sucheta Biswas of RSP. The state minister Firhad Hakim is testing his luck from Kolkata Port constituency where he has locked horns with BJP's Awadh Kishore Gupta and Mohammed Mukhtar of Congress.