Kolkata: Seventy per cent of the 81.76 lakh electorate voted in the fifth and last phase of the West Bengal assembly elections on Monday.
Voting for the 49 Assembly seats spread over six districts phase was peaceful. Darjeeling district recorded 75 per cent polling, Coochbehar 70 per cent, Malda 70 per cent, Jalpaiguri 74 per cent, Utar Dinajpur 63 per cent and Dakshin Dinajpur 68 per cent, according to election department sources.
The phase would decide the fates of the 306 candidates, including seven Left Front ministers -- Asoke Bhattacharya, Jogesh Barman, Biswanath Choudhury, Sailen Sarkar, Hafiz Alam Sairani, Srikumar Mukherjee and Dasharath Tirkey.
There were long queues of voters before in all the six districts at the scheduled end of polling at 5:00 pm. Congress and Forward Bloc workers clashed in front of a booth in Jaigao in Goalpukhar constituency in North Dinajpur where Union minister Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi's wife Deepa is the Congress candidate.
Para military forces posted there brought the situation under control, District Magistrate Manish Jain said.
In Jalpaiguri, a Revolutionary Socialist Party polling agent was arrested for entering a booth in Madarihat without appointment letter.
In Coochbehar, the presiding officer at a booth in Sadar Government High School fell ill during polling and had to be
hospitalised.
EC officials seized leaflets in which an Independent candidate had reportedly declared that he was retiring in favour of the Congress candidate Deepa Dasmunshi in Goalpukhar constituency, Uttar Dinajpur district.
In Siliguri the polling process was delayed as polling officials from the hills could not "communicate" with the locals while in Darjeeling, officials from the plains "failed" to understand the language there, reports said.
In Malda there were reports of poll boycott in two places over local issues. Villagers in Uttarchandipur boycotted votes in 20 booths under Manikchak constituency. Voters also boycotted polls en-masse in a booth at Gurgurapur Primary School in Ratua.
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Reports of poll boycott by villagers were received from Saranjabari village under Tapan block and Shibbari village under Banshihari block in Dakshin Dinajpur on local issues.
There were also reports of poll bocott at a few places in Darjeeling district. A total of 477 companies of security forces were deployed in the six districts for the elections.
Deputy Election Commisioner Ananth Kumar, who supervised polling in Englishbazar and Malda, said he was satisfied with the polling process.
Counting of votes for the 294-member Assembly will done on May 11.
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