West Bengal records 79.79% voter turnout after a mostly peaceful phase one

As per Election Commission officials in the state, 79.79% of voters of the electorates voted on Saturday in the first phase of the Assembly elections.

While 80.03 per cent of the electorate voted in Bankura, 80.55 voted in Jhargram, 80.16 in West Midnapore and 82.42 in East Midnapore district. Polling started at 7 AM and went on till 6 PM after officials increased the timings by an hour due to the pandemic situation. It was mostly peaceful though intermittent cases of violence were reported in certain areas.

Meanwhile, Suvendu Adhikari's brother Soumendu Adhikari accused the Trinamool Congres of causing trouble at Contai. He added that he was attacked when he tried to stop the Trinamool supporters allegedly driving away voters.

Additionally, a TMC delegation led by the party's Lok Sabha leader Sudip Bandyopadhyay and Mala Roy met the Chief Electoral Officer in Kolkata to raise concerns over the differences in the figures provided by the EC and also questioned the EC on how voting percentage reduced drastically to half within five minutes.