The Election Commission has decided to retain 400 companies of central forces in West Bengal till June 6, a senior official said on Friday.
The decision has been taken to maintain the law and order situation in the state considering the history of pre-poll and post-poll violence in the state.
"After the June 1 polling, half of the central forces will leave the state and 400 companies will remain until June 6. Battalions of the BSF, CRPF, and SSB will be retained," the official said.
Meanwhile, Kolkata Police seized over Rs 10 lakh from four bikers on Friday night. The seizure was made during checking near Howrah Bridge ahead of the final phase of polling. As per the Ppolic, they were detained.
Lok Sabha elections in West Bengal
Notably, West Bengal, which has 42 Lok Sabha seats, was slated for polls in all seven phases of the general elections. While the polling for six phases has been concluded, the constituencies in the final phase are to go to polls on June 1.
In the first phase and second phase, the polling was conducted on 3 seats each. In the third phase, 4 seats of the state went to polls while in the fourth phase, the polling was conducted on 8 seats. In the last two phases, i.e., the fifth and sixth phases, voting was conducted on 7 and 8 seats respectively.
The remaining 9 seats, namely Dum Dum, Barasat, Basirhat, Jayanagar, Mathurapur, Diamond Harbour, Jadavpur, Kolkata Dakshin, and Kolkata Uttar, will go into the polls in the seventh and final phase.
A total of 1.63 crore voters - 83.19 lakh men, 80.20 lakh women, and 538 belonging to the third gender - are eligible to exercise their franchise in 17,470 polling stations on June 1.
The state is witnessing a triangular fight between the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) and I.N.D.I.A bloc coalition of Congress-CPI(M).
(With PTI Inputs)
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