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Kolkata: Crucial rural
areas like Singur, Nandigram and other Marxist bastions where
winds of change have been blowing for a while will go to polls
Tuesday as West Bengal's assembly elections enter the fourth
phase.
An electorate of around 1.26 crore is to choose its
representatives in 63 constituencies.
The voting will cover three districts - Howrah, Hooghly and East
Midnapore - and parts of Burdwan.
Hooghly has 18 seats, Howrah and East Midnapore 16 each while
Burdwan has 13 seats.
There are 15,711 polling booths out of which 5,000 have been
declared super sensitive.
In the first three phases, polling has been conducted in 179 of
the 294 assembly seats covering 12 districts.
Hooghly district with 18 assembly seats has been a Left bastion
for the last three decades. In 2006, most of the seats here were
won by the Left Front.
But the political equation changed in the 2009 general election
when the Trinamool Congress made considerable inroads.
The district includes Singur, which saw violent protests by the
Trinmool-led opposition between 2006 and 2008 against land
acquired by the state government for Tata Motors' Nano small car
project. The company later shifted the plant to Gujarat.
The East Midnapore district with 16 assembly seats has also been a
Left Front citadel for the last three decades.
However, the government's bid to set up a chemical hub in
Nandigram triggered violence as the Trinamool led a peasants
agitation which turned violent and left 14 people dead in police
firing.
The district swung the Trinamool way in the 2008 rural body polls
and the opposition won both Lok Sabha seats the next year.
Howrah (16 seats) has also been tilted towards the Left over the
last three decades. But in the 2009 Lok Sabha election, the
Trinamool won its two Lok Sabha seats there.
Of the 25 assembly seats in Burdwan, 13 will go to the polls
Tuesday.
Following land reforms initiated by the Left Front government, the
entire Burdwan district has been a pocket-borough of the ruling
coalition major, the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), for
years.
The district is also known as the rice bowl of the state.
Till 2009, the Left remained unchallenged here, but the Trinamool
made dents in their prospects in last year's civic polls.
As many as 366 candidates, including state Industries Minister
Nirupam Sen, Agriculture Minister Naren Dey, Higher Education
Minister Sudarshan Roy Chowdhury, Information and Culture Minister
Soumendranath Bera and Fire and Emergency Services Minister Pratim
Chatterjee, are in the fray for Tuesday's electoral battle.
The CPI-M is contesting 46 constituencies, CPI six, Trinamool 59,
Congress four, Forward Bloc seven, and the BJP 63.
Polls for the 294-member assembly, which started April 18, will
end May 10. The counting of votes will take place May 13.
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