Polling underway for four civic bodies in West Bengal – Hindustan Times

KOLKATA: Polling is underway in West Bengal for four civic bodies – Asansol, Bidhannagar, Chandannagar and Siliguri –as the voting process took off at 7 am on Saturday. Voting will continue till 5 pm.

A senior official of the state election commission said that elaborate security arrangements have been put in place to ensure peaceful polls.

“Voting is going on peacefully with no major untoward incidents. A few allegations have poured in. We are looking into them,” said a poll panel official.

Barring the civic body in Siliguri, which was bagged by the Left Front in the last municipal elections in 2015, the remaining ones were under the control of the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC).

Elections in these four municipal bodies were due for more than a year as they could not be held due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Elections to the Kolkata Municipal Corporation was held in December 2021.

The TMC had swept the elections bagging 134 out of 144 wards. While the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) finished second with three seats, the Congress and the Left won two wards each.

Even though elections are being held in four civic bodies on Saturday, all eyes are on the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation as the Calcutta high court on Thursday said that the commissioner of the SEC would be personally liable to ensure a violence-free election.

A total of 203 candidates are contesting in 41 wards of the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation. In the last civic elections, the TMC won 37 seats and the Left Front and the Congress won two seats each.

A batch of public interst litigations (PILs) was filed in the Calcutta high court seeking deployment of central armed paramilitary forces for the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation to ensure a violence-free poll. The court, however, left it on the state poll panel to take the final call.

“Security arrangements have been tightened in all civic bodies including Bidhannagar. More than 15,000 police personnel have been deployed. In all, there are around 1.9 million voters in 227 wards of the four civic bodies,” said a poll panel official.