Heavy security outside EVM store rooms in West Bengal

KOLKATA - Heavy security arrangements have been put in place outside the rooms where the verdicts of voters in Sunday’s civic polls across West Bengal have been stored in electronic voting machines (EVMs) ahead of the counting June 2.

Besides policemen, paramilitary troopers and police personnel from other states are also standing guard to prevent any untoward incident or any tampering with the EVMs used in the polls, considered as the final trial of strength among the contesting parties before next year’s assembly elections in the state.

With the politically volatile state prone to violent clashes between parties, particularly after polls, police patrol vans have been sent to potential trouble-spots in districts like West Midnapore, East Midnapore, Howrah, Burdwan, Hooghly, North 24-Parganas and South 24-Parganas.

Meanwhile, the condiction of a youth, injured in firing by a Tripura police constable during the polls at Patuli in the southern outskirts of the city, is stated to be serious.

The police constable has been suspended.

More than 70 percent of the voters exercised their franchise in polling for 81 civic agencies, including the Kolkata Municipal Corporation. The voting was largely peaceful marred only by sporadic violence.

The polling was held in the shadow of Friday’s Gyaneshwari Express rail disaster that claimed at least 145 lives in West Midnapore district.

In Kolkata, 65-70 percent of the voters participated in the polling process to elect their representatives in 141 wards.

The elections were held a year after the Lok Sabha polls that saw the Trinamool Congress-Congress combine along with the Socialist Unity Centre of India decimate the ruling Left Front.

But the political equations have substantially changed this time round.

A striking feature of these elections was the failure of the Trinamool Congress and the Congress to clinch a seat-sharing deal.

Both parties contested the polls by themselves in the Kolkata Municipal Corporation and almost all the municipalities spread across the state.

The Trinamool Congress-Congress combine bagged 27 Lok Sabha seats out of 42 in the state in 2009. The Left Front was reduced from 35 seats in 2004 to 15 in 2009.