Voting begins on 9 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal, the electoral fate of these bigwigs is at stake

Kolkata, June 01 (HS). In the seventh and last phase of the Lok Sabha elections, voting began at 7:00 am on Saturday in nine Lok Sabha seats of West Bengal's capital Kolkata and South 24 Parganas.

In the seventh and final phase of the Lok Sabha elections, voting is going on in Dum Dum, Barasat, Basirhat, Jaynagar, Mathurapur, Diamond Harbor, Jadavpur, Kolkata South and Kolkata North seats of West Bengal on Saturday. Trinamool Congress had won all these seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

According to the state's Chief Election Officer's office, there are a total of 1.63 crore voters in this phase, including 83.19 lakh men, 80.20 lakh women and 538 third gender voters. 17 thousand 470 polling stations have been set up for this phase.

A total of 124 candidates are in the fray in the seventh phase, of which Kolkata South seat has the highest number of 17 candidates, Jadavpur seat has 16 and Basirhat and Kolkata North parliamentary seats have 15 candidates each. 14 candidates are contesting from Dum Dum Lok Sabha seat, while Barasat, Diamond Harbor and Mathurapur (reserved for Scheduled Castes) seats have 12 candidates each. 11 candidates are in the fray in Jayanagar parliamentary constituency (reserved for Scheduled Castes). The contest is going to be interesting on many seats in this phase. All these seats are in the capital Kolkata and South 24 Parganas.

Trinamool stalwart Abhishek Banerjee is contesting from Diamond Harbor. The fate of big candidates like two-time MP Abhishek Banerjee, Sudip Banerjee, Rekha Patra, Tapas Rai, Devshree Choudhary, Anirban Ganguly and Mala Roy is at stake. Voting will continue till 6:00 pm.

According to the commission, webcasting will be done at 100% booths. Voting is being done at a total of 17 thousand 470 booths. Out of these, 3 thousand 748 are sensitive. According to the commission, 967 companies of central forces have been deployed in the state in the seventh round. 33 thousand 292 jawans of the state police are also deployed. The number of police observers in the seventh phase is five. The number of general observers is 10. The number of cost observers is 11.