Voting percentage more than 80% in Bengal panchayat elections
Elections were held in Bengal today for 63,229 gram panchayat seats (across 3,317 gram panchayats), 9,730 panchayat samiti seats (across 341 panchayat samitis) and 928 zila parishad seats (across 20 zila parishads).
Voting took place in 60,593 booths, spread over 22 districts (except Kolkata). Zila parishad elections were not held in Darjeeling and Kalimpong districts as they are governed by the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA).
According to news outlets, state election commission (SEC) officials said the voting percentage was a healthy 80.71 per cent, the total number of eligible voters being 5,67,21,234.
However, violence marked the polling process in several areas. As per media reports, 13 to 16 people, belonging to all the major parties, died in the violence. Ballot boxes were vandalised and bombs thrown at rivals in a number of villages.
Around 17 people from various parties had already died in pre-poll violence, since the election date was announced on June 8.
But by and large, major incidents of violence were restricted to a small percentage of the polling booths, according to the state Minister for Women and Child Development and Social Welfare, Shashi Panja. Trouble occurred in only around 60 booths, and serious incidents in only eight to nine booths, she told mediapersons.
State Election Commissioner (SEC) Rajiva Sinha said he would look into complaints of vote tampering and take decisions on re-polling on Sunday after receiving reports from observers and returning officers.
As per various directions of the Calcutta High Court, 65,000 central forces personnel and 70,000 state police personnel were deployed, with at least 50 per cent of the former forming the security ring for each booth.
Personnel from the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), Border Security Force (BSF), Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB), and Railway Protection Force (RPF) were deployed in larger numbers in areas where violence took place during the nomination process.
