Polls largely peaceful except for stray incidents of violence in Cooch Behar

Siliguri: A voter turnout of 77.57 per cent was recorded till 5 pm in the three Lok Sabha seats in Bengal — Cooch Behar, Alipurduar and Jalpaiguri — where elections were held in the first phase on Friday.

Polling started at 7 am in Cooch Behar, Jalpaiguri and Alipurduars seats, where a total of 56.26 lakh people are eligible to vote.

At 5 pm, the polling percentage stood at 79.33 per cent in Jalpaiguri, 77.73 per cent in Cooch Behar and 75.54 per cent in Alipurduar.

While incidents of sporadic violence continued throughout the day and even when EVMs were being transported to the strongrooms in Cooch Behar; Jalpaiguri and Alipurduar witnessed peaceful polls.

Meanwhile, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) took out ‘victory rallies’ on Friday evening in all three districts while the BJP burst crackers in front of their party offices, both claiming that they were sure to win the elections.

In the Alipurduar constituency, there are a total of 11 candidates contesting. The voter strength is 17,73,252 voters and 1867 booths, with 7000 polling personnel deployed.

In the Jalpaiguri Lok Sabha Constituency, 12 candidates are in the fray. The total number of voters is 1,885,963, and there are 1,904 polling stations.

To manage the polling process, 9,500 polling personnel were deployed. Jalpaiguri has 382 sensitive booths, for which 100 companies of central forces were deployed along with 4,000 state police personnel deployed across the polling stations.