Kolkata:
Polling is on in a big and important chunk of West Bengal in the third phase today. Kolkata and the two districts of North and South 24 Parganas - areas where Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress has dominated for three years now - are voting and briskly.
Thirty-four per cent of the electorate today cast their votes till 11 am in 75 seats.
"An average 34 per cent polling was recorded till 11:00 am," Additional CEO N K Sahana said.
It's a combined electorate of about 1.44 crore people and they will decide the fate of 479 candidates in 75 constituencies, including that of Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee.
Tight security arrangements have been made with the deployment of over 600 companies of security forces to ensure free, fair and peaceful polling, official sources said. In all 17,792 polling booths have been set up with 97.47 per cent voters having EPICs, Election Commission sources said.
Apart from Bhattacharjee, other prominent candidates are Finance Minister Asim Dasgupta, Housing Minister Gautam Deb, Transport Minister Ranjit Kundu, Leader of the Opposition Partha Chatterjee, Kolkata Mayor Sovan Chatterjee, former FICCI secretary general Amit Mitra and cinestar Debashree Roy.
Bhattacharjee is pitted against former state chief secretary and Trinamool Congress candidate Manish Gupta in Jadavpur constituency in South 24 Parganas district, while the former FICCI secretary general is taking on Asim Dasgupta in Khardah in North 24 Parganas.
Mamata Banerjee is fighting this election on the plank of "parivartan" or change. The success of the Trinamool Congress in the region in the 2008 panchayat elections, the 2009 Lok Sabha elections and the 2010 municipal elections is seen to give the party an edge over the Left Front, but the Left insists it has regained a sizeable portion of lost ground.
Key Contestants
1. Buddhadeb Bhattacharya
2. Manish Gupta
3. Gautam Deb
4. Bratya Basu
5. Asim Dasgupta
6. Amit Mitra
(With agency inputs)