Kolkata, April 24 (IANS): Braving the soaring mercury, enthusiastic voters stood in long queues at various West Bengal booths, as over half of the electorate cast their vote Thursday in the first five hours of balloting in six Lok Sabha constituencies.
The authorities said the polling process was peaceful. However, the opposition parties accused the ruling Trinamool Congress activists of indulging in rigging and other electoral malpractices at several booths.
Despite the temperature rising close to 40 degree celsius in many areas, the young and the old, men and women turned up in large numbers to exercise their democratic right for Jangipur, Murshidabad, Malda North, Malda South, Balurghat and Raiganj seats since polling began at 7 a.m., an official said.
"The average percentage is around 50.62 till noon," Election Commission sources told IANS here.
Polling was stalled for some time in a booth under Itahar assembly segment of Balurghat constituency following allegations that all votes were being registered against the name of a particular candidate. The opposition parties accused the ruling Trinamool Congress of having doctored the Electronic voting machine in the booth. Trinamool Congress, however, rubbished the allegation.
The authorities said polling was resumed after changing the malfunctioning EVM, but denied the charge that all votes were being registered in favour of any particular candidate.
The Congress demanded repolling in a booth in Malda district after two its candidates and unions minister Abu Hasem Khan Choudhury from Malda South and Mausam Benazir Noor from Malda North could not cast their votes due to malfunctioning of EVMs.
Both Noor and Choudhury alleged rigging, voters being prevented from casting votes and insufficient deployment of central security personnel in their respective constituencies.
Congress candidate from Balurghat in South Dinajpur district Om Prakash Mishra also alleged malpractices by the ruling Trinamool in some of the booths.
There were reports of a vote boycott in a booth under Raiganj Lok Sabha constituency.
An electorate of 83,311,287, including 4,007,898 female, are eligible to choose their representatives from among 78 candidates in 9,755 polling stations spread over four districts - Muslim majority Malda and Murshidabad, besides North Dinajpur and South Dinajpur.
The four main rivals Trinamool Congress, Left Front, Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party are competing in all the seats. Among the LF partners, the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) is in action in five and the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) in one.
Among the star candidates in this phase are two union Ministers Abu Hasem Khan Choudhury (Malda South) and Deepa Dasmunsi (Raiganj), as also President Pranab Mukherjee's son Abhijit Mukherjee (Jangipur) - all nominated by the Congress.
The ruling Trinamool has given the tickets to popular Bengali band singer Soumitra Roy (Malda North) and theatre personality Arpita Ghosh (Balurghat), while Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) central committee member Md. Salim is in fray from Raiganj, where the BJP candidate is famed actor Nimu Bhaumik.
The results of this phase are crucial for the Congress, which had bagged five of the six seats in 2009 from the constituencies that have gone to the hustings Thursday.
The other seat - Balurghat - had gone to RSP five years back.
West Bengal has 42 Lok Sabha constituencies, of which four voted April 17.
The next three phases of polling will be held April 30 (nine seats), May 7 (six seats) and May 12 (17 constituencies).