Bengal Panchayat Repoll: Voters Across 19 Districts Queue Up Outside 696 Booths, Police Say ‘Enough Deployment’

The repolling is taking places after votes were declared void at 696 polling stations across 19 districts of West Bengal.

Voters queue up outside the polling booth at Tikiapara Primary High School in Murshidabad

Source : ANI

Repolling for panchayat elections in West Bengal started at 7 am on Monday at 696 booths across 19 districts in the state amid tight security. The repolling is taking place after the Bengal state election commission declared voting void at these 696 booths on Saturday. The SEC was chastised on Saturday for allegedly failing to ensure a free and fair election procedure, following the deaths of 18 people on polling day amid allegations of booth capturing and rigging across the state.

Polling was held on Saturday in over 61,000 booths for the three-tier panchayat elections. In several places, ballot boxes were looted, set on fire and thrown in ponds, leading to violence.

The Monday polling will continue till 5 pm with four central forces personnel deployed in each of those booths, besides state police, said the officials as per a PTI report.

Here are top updates of Bengal Panchayat repolls 

• Early morning visuals by ANI showed voters queued up outside polling stations in various districts including Murshidabad, Jalpaiguri, and South 24 Parganas. 
• "There are proper arrangements," SDPO Canning Dibakar Das said outside a polling station in South 24 Parganas. "We have enough deployment today and voters are already lining up. Polling has already started," he said, adding that Punjab Police gave 10 constables and an officer, and so did West Bengal Police. "I too have a reserve of 52 Constables and two officers with me."
• Among the districts where repolling was being held, violence-hit Murshidabad has the highest number of booths at 175, followed by Malda with 109. 
• 89 booths in Nadia were undergoing repolling, followed by Cooch Behar (53), North 24 Parganas (46), Uttar Dinajpur (42), South 24 Parganas (36), Purba Medinipur (31) and Hooghly (29).
• Darjeeling, Jhargram and Kalimpong were the districts where no repolling was ordered. 
• A total 5.67 crore people living in the state's rural areas were eligible to decide the fate of 2.06 lakh candidates in 73,887 seats of the panchayat system. 

(With inputs from ANI and PTI)