Bengal continued to reverse its poll-day trends as Tuesday's third phase polling passed off without reporting a single electoral violence related death. Notwithstanding, reports of sporadic and stray violence filtered in from different parts of four constituencies of Murshidabad, Jangipur, Malda South and Malda North. Amid all these voters polled briskly but a tad on the lower side. Most number of incidents came from Murshidabad where CPI(M) candidate Md Salim ran from booth to booth to report alleged illegal gathering and false voting.
The CPI(M) leader was seen holding an alleged fake polling agent at Raninagar area whom he later handed over to the police. In other places he was seen chasing away people who were jamming the booths. In the process the TMC workers raised "go back" slogans against him, sources said.
In 2019 a number of people had died at Murshidabad alone. In an election about 20 years ago the same district had seen about 75 people killed in a single day … even in last year's panchayat elections lakhs of people could not vote," said a local adding "comparing to what happens in Murshidabad this year things were far more cooler." At Jangipur a BJP booth president was seen exchanging blows with a TMC counterpart who was trying to rig polling, sources said. At Malda South bombs were hurled at Ratua to chase away voters, Congress candidate Isha Khan Chowdhury said.
All this even as the four constituencies witnessed a comparatively low polling at about 74 per cent when reports last came in at 5 pm. The polling percentage was likely to go up by a few percentage points as many people were still standing in queues.
Amid the stray and sporadic violence and sloganeering, singer Arijit Singh rode a scooty to his polling booth at Jiaganj in Jangipur constituency where he and his wife cast their votes. Jangipur stood out also on account of the instance put by Madhabi Lata Sil a 110-year-old woman who walked up to the booth to exercise her voting rights.
"Radha Gobinda (God) has kept me alive to do some works and I think voting is also one of them … so I have come to vote though it is very difficult for me to walk off do my works on my own," she said, adding she would continue to vote as long as she would be able to do so.
