West Bengal bypolls: Over 71 pc voter turnout recorded till 5 pm

West Bengal recorded a voter turnout of 71.38 per cent till 5 pm in the four Assembly constituencies during the by-elections on Saturday.

According to the election commission, the Dinhata assembly seat recorded 69.97 per cent voter turnout while 75.91 per cent turnout is recorded from the Gosaba seat.

Kharadaha seat witnessed a voter turnout of 67 per cent whereas the Santipur seat reported a 77.03 per cent turnout. The voting began at around 7 am and will continue till 6:30 pm on Saturday.

Santipur and Dinhata seats fell vacant after BJP MP Jagannath Sarkar and Nishith Pramanik resigned from the assembly, respectively.

Whereas, elections on the other two seats are being held as All India Trinamool Congress' (TMC) MLAs Kajal Sinha (Khardaha) and Jayanta Naskar (Gosaba) died due to COVID-19.

There is a tough fight between the BJP and the TMC for retaining the seats they had and for capturing the other two.

TMC leader Sovandeb Chattopadhyay, who had resigned from the Bhabanipur constituency to facilitate Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's election to the Assembly, is fighting from Khardaha.

The Mamata Banerjee-led TMC registered a landslide victory in polls held earlier this year, winning 213 seats in the 294-member West Bengal assembly. The BJP emerged as the second-largest party with 77 seats.

Other than West Bengal, voting for three parliamentary seats and 26 other assembly constituencies in various states across the country took place on Saturday.

The results of these polls will be announced on November 2.

( With inputs from ANI )