Campaigning came to end on Saturday for the first day of the first phase of polls in Bengal’s Jangal Mahal area.
Elections would be held for 18 seats across three districts of Purulia, Bankura and West Midnapore. All these districts form the part of Jangal Mahal which was hit by left-wing extremism till a few years ago.
Elections will be held in 9 districts of Purulia, three of Bankura and six of West Midnapore districts on Monday. Out of these 18 seats 13 are considered highly sensitive on account of their Maoist past. This means that polling will end in these seats by 4 pm, two hours before the normal timing.
About 40 lakh voters will decide the fate of 133 candidates in fray from major outfits like the Trinamool Congress, left Front and BJP.
There are 4945 booths.
Among the major stake-holders in the first day of the first round are State Minister Sukumar Hansda and former Marxist MP Pulin Behari Baskey.
While the Trinamool Congress banks on what Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee says “a smiling Jangal Mahal” as compared to the bloodshed, Maoist fear, and CPI(M) atrocities pre-2011 apart from her Kanyashree, free-cycle and Rs 2-a-kilo-rice scheme, the left-Congress-BJP harp on the flight of industry and acute unemployment, “cold terror” where very few voters can actually cast their votes, corruption (from Saradha to Narada), unleashed by the Trinamool as the main election issues.
Jangal Mahal had been a left bastion and even in 2011 anti-CPI(M) wave the Front managed to retain more than half of its strongholds. “But this time we will finish them off” says Hansda while CPI(M)’s Surya Kanto Mishra said “this time the people have decided to resist rigging.”