Over 3.6 crore voters to decide fate of about 1478 candidates in phase 1 polls

Kolkata: Over 3.60 crore electors will participate in the first phase of the West Bengal Assembly elections scheduled for April 23 across 152 constituencies, according to data released by the Election Commission of India.

The electorate will decide the fate of a total of 1478 candidates who are contesting in the first phase. Of the total electorate, 1.84 crore are male voters and 1.75 crore female.

The voter count has declined by 9.4 per cent from 3.98 crore recorded before the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise. A total of 24.03 lakh electors were deleted after being marked as ASDD (absent, shifted, dead, duplicate) in the draft roll published on December 16 last year. Another 14.28 lakh names were removed during the judicial adjudication phase, with a few thousand more deleted following hearings before the final roll was published on February 28.

Despite recording the highest number of deletions, Murshidabad retains the largest electorate at 50.26 lakh, followed by East Midnapore (41.60 lakh) and West Midnapore (37.70 lakh). Murshidabad saw over 7 lakh deletions, while Malda lost more than 4 lakh voters and now has 27.91 lakh electors.

Among the 15 districts going to polls in Phase I, Darjeeling is the only district where female voters outnumber males, with a total electorate of 11,10,425, including 5,58,335 females and 5,52,064 males. Kalimpong has the smallest electorate at 2.01 lakh.

A total of 1,586 candidates had filed nominations for these 152 assembly constituencies, out of which 108 nominations were either rejected during scrutiny or withdrawn.