Lok Sabha Election 2019: Bengal tops sixth phase for violence and turnout

Voting for the penultimate phase of polling took place on Sunday at 59 constituencies spread across seven states, and an overall voter turnout of 63.12 per cent was witnessed. All seven seats of the National Capital and 10 seats of Haryana went to polls in a single phase on Sunday.

West Bengal, which saw high voter turnouts in the previous five phases, again clocked an impressive 80.35 per cent turnout, the highest for any state in Phase-VI, although it was still lower than the 85 per cent turnout witnessed at these seats in 2014. However, just like the previous five phases, the sixth phase also saw violence at several polling centres in the state.

On Sunday, several cases of violence were reported In Midnapore, Bankura and Ghatal constituencies, including cases where people tried to prevent central armed police forces (CAPFs) from entering their villages. The West Bengal chief electoral officer has sought a report from the Ghatal district magistrate regarding an attack on BJP candidate Bharati Ghosh's convoy earlier in the day. A complaint was also lodged against Ghosh herself for using her mobile phone to click a photograph near a polling booth.

In all, there were 979 candidates in the fray in the sixth phase of polls across parties, including several key leaders.

These included BJP's Maneka Gandhi, Varun Gandhi, Rita Bahuguna Joshi, Dilip Ghosh and Meenakshi Lekhi, Congress's Digvijaya Singh, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Sheila Dikshit, Ajay Maken, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Kirti Azad, etc. Akhilesh Yadav of Samajwadi Party and Manas Bhunia of the Trinamool were also in the fray.

In Delhi, where a three-party contest between the Congress, AAP and BJP is brewing, voter turnout was the least among all seven states. At 59.12 per cent, this was much lesser than the 65 per cent seen in 2014, when BJP won all seven seats.

In Haryana, where the BJP is banking on splitting the Jat votes, the turnout was 67.06 per cent, again lesser than the 2014's turnout figure of 71.40 per cent. Uttar Pradesh's 54.29 per cent polling was almost identical to the 54.5 per cent polling seen in 2014.

Perhaps the only state which saw an increased voter turnout as compared to 2014 was Madhya Pradesh, which had seen 56.8 per cent voters exercise their franchise in 2014, but saw 64.22 per cent this time. Eight constituencies of the state, including four from the Gwalior Chambal region — Gwalior, Guna, Morena and Bhind — went to the polls, as also did three in central MP — Bhopal, Vidisha and Rajgarh — and Sagar in Bundelkhand.

In 2014, the BJP had won all seven seats comfortably, while Guna went to Congress's Jyotiraditya