KOLKATA: The stage is set for by-elections in four state Assembly constituencies — Dinhata, Santipur, Khardah and Gosaba (SC) on Saturday. The total number of electors, including the service electors in these constituencies is 1016766. A total of 18 candidates are contesting the bypolls. There are 1,439 polling stations with the highest (417) being in Dinhata.
In the state Assembly elections held earlier this year, Dinhata and Santipur seats were won by BJP, while Khardah and Gosaba (SC) were bagged by Trinamool Congress (TMC).
Among the constituencies — Dinhata in Cooch Behar district has the highest number of voters totalling to 298912, followed by Ranaghat in Nadia with 255334 voters, Khardah in North 24-Parganas with 232393 and Gosaba (SC) in South 24-Parganas with 230127 electors.
Female electors will play a crucial role in the bypolls in all four constituencies with Gosaba having more female voters in comparison to their male counterparts. There are 111874 female voters in Gosaba against 118247 male electors.
The total number of male electors in the four ACs is 520845. There are 495904 female voters. There are 17 third gender electors but no overseas voters in all the four constituencies.
The Election Commission (EC) is deploying 92 companies of Central forces for the by-polls. The maximum number of Central forces is being deployed at Dinhata that has the Indo-Bangladesh border.
As many as 27 companies of Central forces will be deployed in Dinhata. About 22 companies will be deployed at Santipur, 20 at Khardah and 23 companies in Gosaba. Eight companies of Central forces will be retained after the bypolls till the counting gets over, which is scheduled to be held on November 2.
There are four general observers, four police observers and four expenditure observers, one in each of the constituencies. There will be 177 micro-observers.
Webcasting will be done in 760 polling stations. Seven candidates are contesting the elections from Khardah seat, followed by Santipur and Gosaba (SC), where four candidates each will contest from both seats. Only three candidates are in the fray for Dinhata seat.