Kolkata: The Election Commission has decided to deploy 779 companies of central forces for the sixth phase of Assembly elections in West Bengal in which voters of 43 constituencies across four districts will exercise their franchise on April 22.
Though the commission has scaled down the deployment compared to the other phases, it has deployed a large number of forces in the Barrackpore constituency that has a history of violence in the last few elections.
According to the deployment pattern laid down by the poll panel, there will be highest deployment of 278 companies of central forces in North 24 Parganas district followed by 181 companies in North Dinajpur district, 163 companies in Nadia district and 157 companies of central forces in East Burdwan district.
In the sixth phase, polling will be held in 17 constituencies in North 24 Parganas, 9 constituencies each in Nadia and North Dinajpur and 8 constituencies in East Burdwan district.
Though the scale of deployment in this phase will be lower than the other phases, the poll panel has deployed 107 companies of central forces only for the Barrackpore constituency — much higher than the average deployment in the other constituencies.
“Barrackpore has a history of violence and in the last two elections, there was large scale violence in the constituency and so the Commission didn’t want to take any chance. The Cmmission wants to conduct the elections in a peaceful manner and for that we will do whatever needed,” a senior official of the state poll panel said.
In the sixth phase, 306 candidates will contest in the 43 constituencies across four districts. The total number of booths in this phase is 14,480 of which 10,897 are primary booths and the remaining 3,583 are auxiliary booths.
The number of booths has been increased in this elections because of the Covid situation in the country. There are a total 10387791 voters in this phase of which male voters are 5321385 and female voters are 5066150. The number of third gender voters is 256.
There are 22,156 service voters in this phase and 15 people have registered themselves as NRI voters.