Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate from the Noapara constituency, Arjun Singh, cast his vote at a polling booth in Kolkata as polling for the second phase of the West Bengal Assembly elections began on Wednesday morning.
Arjun Singh told ANI, “I have cast my vote. I have voted for a change. I have voted for the formation of a BJP government here.”
Singh said he expects a high voter turnout, like 93.2 per cent in the first phase of the polls.
“This (voter turnout) should be like the first phase. This is the Election Commission’s duty; if they don’t do it, then it is their failure. At booth number 238, the cable of the webcast camera was found snapped. The Election Commission fixed it. Police cannot be seen here; it will be good if we can see them,” the BJP candidate said.
Arjun Singh is contesting elections from the Noapara constituency against Trinamool Congress candidate Trinankar Bhattacharjee. The seat is currently held by TMC’s three-time MLA Manju Basu, who won the Communist Party of India (Marxist) bastion for the first time in 2001.
In the last elections, Manju Basu defeated the BJP’s Sunil Singh by a margin of 26,710 (14.1 per cent) votes.
Congress’ Asoke Bhattacharya and CPI(M)’s Gargi Chatterjee are also in the fray, turning polls in Noapara into a four-cornered contest.
Meanwhile, people formed queues at a polling station in Nadia to cast their votes. A voter lauded the security arrangements and said, “Everything is fine here; there are no issues. Security arrangements are good.”
The second phase of the polling is widely seen as the ‘litmus test’ for the Trinamool Congress (TMC), as voting moves into the party’s traditional fortresses in South Bengal and Kolkata.
The second phase covers 142 out of 294 seats in West Bengal. The total electorate is around 3.21 crore, with 1,64,35,627 men, 1,57,37,418 women and 792 transgender voters.
1,448 candidates are in the fray, including 220 women at 41,001 polling stations, with over 8,000 managed entirely by women.
While 142 seats are up for grabs, all eyes are on the ‘Big Five’ urban contests. The high-stakes seat of Kolkata Bhabanipur Constituency is witnessing a clash of heavyweights in Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee versus LoP Suvendu Adhikari. Tollyganj, the heart of the Bengali film industry, is a high-profile star-studded battle.
In the 2021 elections, the TMC dominated this specific belt, winning 123 of these 142 seats. For the BJP, this phase is about making inroads into the urban “bhadralok” vote and the Matua community. For the TMC, it is about holding the line to ensure a fourth consecutive term for Mamata Banerjee.