The polling for Phase 2 of Assembly elections is being held in the eastern states of Assam and West Bengal on Thursday, April 1. In Assam, 27 constituencies are going to poll today and have an electorate between 1.5 and 2 lakh while in West Bengal will vote to elect MLAs for 30 constituencies in this phase.
The northeastern state of Assam – where the first phase of polls were held on March 27 along with Bengal – will also see high profile candidates, including a numbers of ministers in the outgoing government, among the 345 candidates in the battle for the 39 seats that go to polls in the second phase. In West Bengal, All eyes are set on the Nandigram constituency where Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is pittied against her protege-turned-adversary Suvendu Adhikari. The former ministerial colleague of Mamata Banerjee, Suvendu Adhikari, had joined the BJP in December last year.
For Ms Banerjee, and the BJP, the battle for Nandigram is a prestige fight because it was the 2007 anti-land acquisition movement in the region that helped her capture power in the state for the first time. The stakes are high with Adhikari swearing that he would quit politics if he does not defeat Banerjee by 50,000 votes in Nandigram. Out of the 171 candidates in the fray, 152 are men and the remaining are women. The voting will end at 6 pm.
