Battleground Bengal: Fate of 124 Candidates to Be Sealed in 7TH Phase of LS Polls on June 1

The fate of 124 candidates will be sealed on June 1 in the seventh and last phase of Lok Sabha elections for nine Lok Sabha constituencies in West Bengal.

The nine Lok Sabha constituencies that will be going for polls on June 1 include Kolkata – Dakshin and Kolkata – Uttar in Kolkata, Jadavpur, Jayanagar, Mathurapur and Diamond Harbour in South 24 Parganas and Basirhat, Barasat, and Dum Dum in North 24 Parganas.

The prominent candidates whose fate will be sealed include Trinamool Congress’s General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee from Diamond Harbour, the BJP candidate from Basirhat, Rakha Patra, and the CPI-M Central Committee member Sujan Chakraborty from Dum Dum.

Of the 124 candidates, the maximum will be from Kolkata - Dakshin at 17, followed by Jadavpur at 16. There are 15 candidates each in Kolkata – Uttar and Basirhat.

While Dum Dum has 14 candidates, Mathurapur and Diamond Harbour have 12 candidates each. Jaynagar has the least number of candidates at 11.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Trinamool Congress candidates were elected from all these nine constituencies.

Special focus will be on the Basirhat Lok Sabha because of the Sandeshkhali incident, which is one of the seven assembly constituencies under this Lok Sabha. It will be tough for the Trinamool Congress to retain Sandeshkhali this time, which has been its bastion since 2009.

At least 1,020 companies of Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) have been stationed in West Bengal. A total of 978 companies will be deployed for polling duty in the seventh phase, while the remaining will be kept on reserve.

In the 7th phase, the Election Commission of India (ECI) has given a special focus on more effective deployment and functioning of Quick Response Teams (QRTs) to address events of poll-related tension and violence in areas at a distance from the polling stations.

The commission has decided to increase the deployment of QRTs substantially in the seventh phase to reduce the average response time to 15. Each QRT will be accompanied by a local cop aware of the topography so that the QRT concerned can reach the spot of tension at the earliest.