Bengal in 5th gear,no lull in voting

Significantly,there was neither any report of poll boycott nor any major law and order problem during the day. “It was incident-free and there was no obstruction due to violence. There was no serious complaint from any candidate,” said Deputy Election Commissioner Vinod Zutshi.

The administration,however,made 109 preventive arrests in the four districts. Of them,70 have been arrested from Burdwan alone,followed by 22 in West Midnapore,16 in Bankura and one in Purulia.

“They were arrested on charges of trying to disrupt the polling. There were also allegations that some of them were trying to influence voters by using fake EVMs. Such people have been immediately arrested. Other than that,there have been no prominent arrests,” said Chief Electoral Officer Sunil Kumar Gupta.

Two helicopters,one of them based at West Midnapore and the other based at Purulia,carried out aerial surveillance of the booths. Also,Debashish Chakrobarty,CEO of Maharashtra,who has come to Bengal as the special observer of the fifth and sixth phase of the polls,visited the booths in all the four districts on Saturday. After the last phase,he will prepare a report and will submit it to the Election Commission.

In Burdwan,which does not constitute the Junglemahal and is the industrialised part of the state,the voting was brisk. The voting percentage in the 12 seats of the district was stated to be 80 per cent despite soaring temperature in the area. “One more important thing,the security arrangement was unprecedented,” said a voter in Durgapur (East) constituency.