WB: Third phase to decide fate of Buddha, Mitra

An electorate of 1.44 crore is expected to vote on Wednesday in the crucial third phase of the West Bengal assembly polls spread over three districts of Kolkata and North and South 24 Parganas district to decide the fate of 479 candidates including Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee.

Tight security arrangements have been made with the deployment of over 600 companies of security force to ensure free, fair and peaceful polling, official sources said.

Complete Coverage: Assembly Election 2011 

In all 17,792 polling booths have been set up with 97.47 per cent voters having electoral photo identity cards, Election Commission sources said. The 75 constituencies include 11 in Kolkata, 33 in neighbouring North and 31 in South 24-Parganas districts.

Apart from Bhattacharjee, other prominent candidates are Bengal's Finance Minister Asim Dasgupta, Housing Minister Gautam Deb, Transport Minister Ranjit Kundu, the Leader of the Opposition Partha Chatterjee, Kolkata Mayor Sovan Chatterjee, former Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry 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 was taking on Asim Dasgupta in Khardah in North 24 Parganas.

Although North 24 Parganas was regarded as a Left stronghold, Trinamool Congress has made deep inroads in the district making a clean sweep in the Lok Sabha elections in 2009. The party also made substantial gains in South 24 Parganas where the party won all the four Lok Sabha seats in 2009.

The zilla parishad in South 24 Paraganas was also under the party's control of the Trinamool. The story is the same in Kolkata where the party had captured both the Lok Sabha seats in 2009, besides winning the Kolkata Municipal Corporation poll last year with a huge margin.