Repolling underway at 696 polling booths in West Bengal

Kolkata: Re-polling is going on for Panchayat elections at 696 polling stations (booths) in 19 districts in West Bengal. Voting during the panchayat elections at these centers was declared invalid due to allegations of ballot box tampering and the death of 15 people in election-related violence. Officials said that the re-polling began at 7 am. Till 11 am, 10.9 percent polling was done. For this, tight security arrangements have been made and apart from the state police, four personnel of the central force are deployed at each polling station.
Voting started late at some polling stations due to non-arrival of ballot boxes on time, officials said. An official of the State Election Commission (SEC) said, “No major untoward incident was reported from the districts where re-polling is underway. There were some sporadic incidents, but they were brought under control by the police.” He told that a road in Nadia’s Tehatta was blocked in the morning, but later the police got it restored. Voters protest outside a polling station in Mayna in East Medinipur district. Voting will continue till 5 pm.
Officials said that among the districts where re-polling has been announced, Murshidabad has the maximum number of 175 polling stations followed by Malda with 109 polling stations. Re-polling is being held at 89 polling stations in Nadia, 53 in Cooch Behar, 46 in North 24 Parganas, 42 in North Dinajpur, 36 in South 24 Parganas, 31 in East Medinipur and 29 in Hooghly. He said that re-polling was not ordered in Darjeeling, Jhargram and Kalimpong districts. After reviewing reports of violence and tampering with ballot boxes and ballot papers, the State Election Commission (SEC) on Sunday evening announced re-polling at these 696 polling stations.
Voting was held at more than 61,000 polling stations on Saturday for the three-tier panchayat elections. At many places, ballot boxes were looted or set on fire and thrown into ponds, following which violence broke out. In the polling held on Saturday for 73,887 seats in rural areas of the state, 5.67 crore people were eligible to vote.