Bengal bypolls: 55 companies of CAPF to be deployed in four Assembly seats

Kolkata, June 11 (IANS) The Election Commission of India (ECI) has decided to deploy 55 companies of Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) personnel for the bye-elections for four Assembly constituencies in West Bengal to be conducted on July 10.

Sources said that the deployment and route marches by the CAPF companies will start on June 15, almost a month before the polling day.

“This is the initial figure and in due course depending on the ground-level realities the Commission will decide whether the CAPF deployment will be further increased or not,” said a source in the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO).

The four Assembly constituencies that will bypolls will be held are Bagda from North 24 Parganas district, Ranaghat-Dakshin in Nadia district, Raiganj in North Dinajpur district and Maniktala in Kolkata.

The bye-election at Maniktala has been necessitated by the demise of the erstwhile Trinamool Congress legislator from there Sadhan Pande.

In the other three constituencies, the erstwhile BJP legislators, namely Biswajit Das from Bagda, Dr Mukut Mani Adhikari from Ranaghat- Dakshin and Krishna Kalyani from Raiganj, all of whom got elected in 2021, had to resign from Assembly as they contested Lok Sabha election as Trinamool Congress candidates.

Although all three of them got defeated this time, bypolls need to be conducted in these three Assembly constituencies from where they had resigned.

According to statistics from the office of the CEO, in terms of the results of the recently concluded Lok Sabha polls, BJP is ahead at Bagda, Ranaghat- Dakshin and Raiganj, while Trinamool Congress is ahead only from Maniktala.