Voting for the seventh phase of the West Bengal assembly elections has begun amid the growing outbreak of the coronavirus epidemic. In this phase, over 86 lakh voters will decide the fate of 284 candidates for 34 seats in West Vardhman, Dakshin Dinajpur, Malda and Kolkata.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has tweeted and appealed to the people to vote vigorously following the prevention of coronavirus.
In this phase, all eyes will be on the prestigious Bhawanipur seat, which Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee vacated to fight Nandigram.
The Trinamool Congress (TMC) has fielded Energy Minister Shobhan Dev Chattopadhyay, who has won the assembly elections seven times in a row. Ghosh hails from Bhawanipur and cast his vote on this.
He is pitted against popular Bengali actor Rudranil Ghosh, who is contesting on a BJP ticket.
These candidates will also be kept watch
Talking about other important candidates, the city development minister and the Mayor of Kolkata, Firhad Hakim, will contest the Kolkata Port seat for the third consecutive time. They are pitted against Awadh Kishore Gupta of BJP and Mohammad Mukhtar of Congress. A minority vote can play an essential role in this seat.
Apart from this, Rural Development Minister Subrat Mukherjee and actor Sayoni Ghosh are the other two TMC candidates whose fate will be decided at this stage.
In the seventh phase, voting was going to be held in the first 36 seats, but due to the death of candidates, voting on two seats was postponed.
The election of the Jangipur assembly seat has been postponed due to the death of Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) candidate Pradeep Kumar Nandi from the Coronavirus. He died on Friday.
Simultaneously, the election of Shamsherganj has been postponed following the death of Congress hopeful Regaul Haq from Corona.
Old results
Talking about the old results of a total of 36 seats in the seventh phase, including these two, TMC won 14 of these seats in 2016 and got 36.8 per cent of the votes.
The Congress had 12 seats and 22.4 per cent of the vote, and the Left parties had ten seats and 21.6 per cent of the vote. The BJP had got only 13.1 per cent votes and failed to win a single seat.
Final phase voting on 29 April 2021 in Bengal, results will come on 2 May 2021
After this phase, there will be one more phase of voting in Bengal, which will occur on 29 April. So far, six-phase elections have been held on 27 March, 1 April, 6 April, 10 April and 17 April.
The results of the election will come on 2 May. The day will also result in the assembly elections in Kerala, Assam, Tamil Nadu and the Union Territory of Puducherry. These states also have elections in April.