Kolkata (West Bengal): The by-polls in West Bengal's three constituencies concluded peacefully without major incidents on Thursday. South Kolkata's Bhabanipur, where Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee contested, Murshidabad district's Samsergunj and Jangipur went for by-polls on Thursday.
The average voters' turnout in these three constituencies till 5 PM was at 69.31 percent. The polling percentage in Bhabanipur till that period had been far lower at 53.32 percent. Jangipur and Samsergunj recorded 76.12 percent and 78.60 percent respectively.
After losing from Nandigram in the recent assembly elections, Mamata is keeping her hopes pinned on Bhabanipur. The chief minister's close contestants this time are BJP's Priyanka Tibrewal and CPI(M)'s Srijib Biswas, both professional advocates in personal life.
Although the polling process had been peaceful since early morning, the BJP candidate since the morning had been complaining against the ruling Trinamool Congress of polling malpractices like bogus voting. Tibrewal also filed a complaint with the Election Commission of India (ECI) against two heavyweight members of the state cabinet ministers, Subrata Mukherjee and Firhad Hakim of influencing the voters by moving around in the area with their followers.
Read: West Bengal by-polls: BJP alleges booth capturing being attempted by TMC
She demanded that both these ministers should be kept in isolation and under surveillance at a local police station outside Bhabanipur till the elections are over. Mukherjee and Hakim denied the allegations. "Merely having a cup of tea at a local tea shop with some people of the locality does not mean that I was influencing the voters," Hakim said. Subrata Mukherjee also said that he had neither entered the booth nor made any attempt to influence the voters.
A total of 41 complaints of election malpractices were filed with the ECI for the three constituencies that went for polls on Thursday, out of which 29 were pertaining to Bhabanipur.
However, at the end of the day, the ECI rejected and turned down 23 out of 29 complaints. The DEO (SOUTH), A Singh clearly said that the complaints were rejected as the commission did not find merit after carefully scrutinizing them.
Heavy security deployment was made at all three constituencies with a special focus on Bhabanipur. Apart from 35 companies of central armed forces, 2,500 personnel from Kolkata Police too were deployed in Bhabanipur. The entire security arrangements were supervised by four officers in the rank of deputy commissioner of police and two officers in the ranks of additional commissioners of police.
Read: Bhabanipur by-polls: EC turns down all allegations of BJP
