KOLKATA: Thousands of security personnel dot every nook and corner of
East Midnapore
and
Cooch Behar
districts as polling will be held on Thursday for the sixth and
final phase
of West Bengal Assembly elections covering 25 constituencies in the two districts.
An electorate of over 58 lakh people is eligible to cast their ballots at 6,774 polling stations between 7 AM to 6 PM.
In all, 170 candidates, including 18 women, are in the fray for the last phase.
Maintaining a tight security cover, the poll panel has deployed 361 companies of central forces, assisted by a contingent of 12,000 state police personnel.
Out of the total electors, 27.8 lakh are females while the third gender is a small minority of 68 voters.
For the first time since Independence, residents of border enclaves in Cooch Behar district will be able to exercise their franchise, thanks to the formal inclusion of these enclaves into Indian territory last year.
There are 9,776 voters in the
enclave
, for whom special arrangements and awareness programs were organised.
Among them is 103-year-old Asgar Ali of Madhya Mashaldanga who is eligible to vote for the first time in his life.
In East Midnapore, on the other hand, the district administration has taken special intervention to make the elections a disabled-friendly one.
They have pinpointed 15,500 persons with disability in the electoral rolls. Each of the polling premises has a wheelchair, ramp with handrails and braille signage.
The commission has so far identified 714 vulnerable hamlets and 1685 vulnerable voters in the two districts.
Close to 900 trouble-mongers have been identified and action taken against all of them.
All eyes will be on Nandigram in East Midnapore district where a violent anti-land acquisition movement had helped uproot the 34 year-long Left Front government.
Trinamool Congress, which had won all 16 seats in East Midnapore district in 2011, has now fielded its Tamluk MP Suvendu Adhikari from Nandigram.
He is pitted against CPI-M's Abdul Kabir Sheikh, supported by the Congress-Left alliance.
State Environment Minister Sudarshan Ghosh Dastidar is another heavyweight in the fray. He is seeking to defend his Mahisadal seat.
Former Trinamool minister Hiten Barman is trying his luck once again from the Sitalkuchi seat.
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