• Filmmaker Anik Dutta heckled and threatened at polling station. CPM nominee Saira Shah Halim meets him at his Dover Lane residence.
  
• 89.89 per cent voter turnout recorded till 3:00 pm in Bengal. Barasat: 71.80 per cent, Basirhat: 76.56 per cent, Diamond Harbour: 72.87 per cent, Dum Dum: 67.60 per cent, Jadavpur: 70.41 per cent, Joynagar: 73.44 per cent, Calcutta South: 60.88 per cent, Calcutta North: 59.23 per cent, Mathuranagar: 74.13 per cent
  
• Basirhat: Clash reported between villagers and police at Sandeshkhali
  
• Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee casts her vote in Calcutta South Constituency
• 58.46 per cent voter turnout recorded till 3:00 pm in Bengal. Barasat: 59.69 per cent, Basirhat: 66.76 per cent, Diamond Harbour: 68.08 per cent, Dumdum: 53.06 per cent, Jadavpur: 56.49 per cent , Joynagar: 62.24 per cent, Calcutta South: 50.61 per cent, Calcutta North: 51.22 per cent, Mathurapur: 66.66 per cent
  
• 45.07 per cent voter turnout recorded till 1:00 pm in Bengal. Barasat: 47.49 per cent, Basirhat: 50.89 per cent, Diamond Harbour: 47.33 per cent, Dumdum: 41.09 per cent, Jadavpur: 42.35 per cent , Joynagar: 48.27 per cent, Calcutta South: 39 per cent, Calcutta North: 39.48 per cent, Mathurapur 47.03 per cent
• Calcutta North: Trinamul leader Kunal Ghosh says, free and fair polling being held
  
• 28.10 per cent voter turnout recorded till 11:30 am in Bengal. Barasat: 27.86 per cent; Basirhat: 32.57 per cent; Diamond Harbour: 31.51 per cent; Dum Dum: 24.83 per cent; Jadavpur: 30.25 per cent; Joynagar: 30.25 per cent; Calcutta South: 24.02 per cent; Calcutta North: 24.02 per cent; Mathurapur: 30.50 per cent
  
• Calcutta North: BJP nominee Tapas Roy heckled outside a booth
  
• Dum Dum: Seven to eight CPM agents were not allowed to leave his home at Muragachha, Sodepur. CPM candidate Sujan Chakraborty alleges, the Election Commission and police are not acting impartially after meeting the families
  
• Election Commission receives 715 complaints in West Bengal till 9 am on Saturday. The CPM has lodged 46 complains, the BJP has filed 25 and the Trinamul has lodged six
  
• Trinamul-BJP clashes reported from Joynagar
  
• Basirhat: Two Tinamul supporters allegedly assaulted by BJP cadre with lathis at Sandeshkhali
  
• Baranagar Assembly bypoll: CPM candidate Tanmay Bhattacharya allegedly engaged in blows with a Trinamul councillor
  
• Calcutta South: Trinamul leader Abhishek Banerjee casts his vote, Says, results will be a surprise
  
• Calcutta South: CPM nominee Saira Shah Halim catches "fake" agent at a polling booth in Picnic Garden
  
• Diamond Harbour: A female voter in booth 245 alleges she was not allowed to vote
  
• Dum Dum: CPM supporters allegedly threatened in North Dum Dum area
  
• 12.63 per cent voter turnout recorded till 9.30 am in Bengal. Barasat: 12.94 per cent; Basirhat: 15.66 per cent; Diamond Harbour: 14.16 per cent; Dum Dum: 10.86 per cent; Jadavpur: 13.46 per cent; Joynagar: 13.13 per cent; Calcutta South: 10.16 per cent; Calcutta North: 8.92 per cent; Mathurapur: 13.54 per cent
  
• Calcutta South: BJP nominee Debashree Chowdhury in an altercation with voters outside a boot
  
• EVM and VVPAT machine were reportedly thrown in water by a mob at booth number 40, 41 in Kultali, South 24 Parganas district. However, the Election Commission said that no EVM or VVPAT machine were taken away from polling booths and those which were thrown in water were reserved EVMs
• Calcutta North: Trinamul supporters raise slogans against BJP nominee Tapas Roy outside a booth at Cossipore
  
• The EC will issue the first set of polling percentage from 9.30 am onwards
  
• At Bermajur area in Sandeshkhali, BJP alleged that TMC workers and policemen threatened its polling agents last night after visiting their homes, reports Indian Express
• Clash between Trinamul and Indian Secular Force supporters at Bhangor. Bricks hurled at police. Cops retaliate with lathis and batons: Reports
  
• Sporadic violence reported from different parts of Bengal on last day of elections

The ruling Trinamul’s impenetrable fortress in south Bengal, making for a total of nine of the 42 Lok Sabha constituencies in the state, has withstood the BJP’s onslaught for a decade.

The last phase of election on Saturday in these nine constituencies – Kolkata Uttar (Calcutta North), Kolkata Dakshin (Calcutta South), Jadavpur, Dum Dum, Barasat, Basirhat, Mathurapur, Joynagar and Diamond Harbour – is a test for the Trinamul, the BJP and the Election Commission.

In 2019, the Trinamul made a clean sweep of these nine seats.

A total of 1.63 crore voters – 83.19 lakh men, 80.20 lakh women, and 538 belonging to the third gender– are eligible to exercise their franchise in 17,470 polling stations on June 1.

Graphics: TT Online

Of the 124 contestants in the seventh phase of polling, Kolkata Dakshin has the highest number of 17 candidates, followed by Jadavpur (16), and 15 each in Basirhat and Kolkata Uttar parliamentary seats.

From the Dum Dum Lok Sabha seat, 14 candidates are contesting, while there are 12 nominees each in Barasat, Diamond Harbour, and Mathurapur (SC) seats, and in Joynagar (SC) there are 11 contestants.

Fears of violence in final phase of elections

From Thursday night onwards, reports of violence came in from Jadavpur and Dum Dum Lok Sabha constituencies.

Crude bombs injured five people in South 24 Parganas' Bhangor, the only seat in the West Bengal Legislative Assembly that did not go to either the Trinamul or the BJP in the 2021 Assembly polls. It is a part of the Jadavpur Lok Sabha constituency.

Complaints of threats and assault were reported from other parts of Jadavpur and Dum Dum.

The Election Commission has deployed over 24,000 personnel of the central forces to ensure peaceful polling.

This year’s election has largely been free from large-scale violence, though allegations of voter intimidation against the ruling Trinamul have increased since the fourth phase onwards.

The Diamond Harbour Lok Sabha seat, the fief of Trinamul’s general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, is a case in point.

Interpretation of the poll figures of Diamond Harbour from the 2019 Lok Sabha polls depends on which side of the prism one is looking at.

In 2019, Abhishek had received more than 99 per cent votes in nine polling stations, over 90 per cent in 178 polling stations and in 527 polling stations his vote share was above 75 per cent. He had won the seat by over 3.20 lakh votes then. In some of the polling booths, the opposition candidates had received only one vote.

While Trinamul insists it is the people’s support of the “Diamond Harbour model” of development, the Opposition this time too has alleged widespread intimidation.

The BJP candidate in Diamond Harbour, Abhijit Das, has alleged that over 2,000 criminals have been provided shelter in different parts of the constituency. The Election Commission has identified 198 of the 1,961 polling booths in the constituency as sensitive.

All eyes on Sandeshkhali

In North 24 Parganas' Basirhat, that includes Sandeshkhali, scene of violent protests against a former local Trinamul strongman, since January, the EC is paying special attention with 81 companies of central forces to mark the 1,096 sensitive booths of the 1,882 total booths, the highest among all the constituencies.

The BJP is confident of putting up a good fight in the seat banking on the protests it had led in the area. The BJP has fielded Rekha Patra, one of the victims of sexual atrocities allegedly committed on a large number of women of Sandeshkhali. The Trinamul has released several videos claiming the protests were a BJP conspiracy to malign the ruling party and the people of Bengal.

Mamata Banerjee's party has fielded the veteran Haji Nurul Islam. And also in the fray is the CPM's former MLA Nirapada Sardar.

In Calcutta, test for Mamata

Kolkata Dakshin (Calcutta South) has remained loyal to Mamata Banerjee since 1991, for an unbroken 33 years, the first seven of which were during Banerjee’s stint as a Congress leader.

With nearly 35 per cent middle-class citizens, the seat comprises over 25 per cent Muslims, about 18 per cent Marwaris, some 12 per cent Gujaratis, close to 7 per cent Sikhs and even a considerable population of Indians with Chinese roots.

“There’s not a single way that voters in this constituency think,” Abhirup Sarkar, economist and a voter from the segment, told PTI.

“The less privileged are bothered with basic infrastructure and personal benefits from the government. The affluent, on the other hand, are more likely to be aware of the broad issues of the state and the country."

While the TMC has repeated sitting MP Mala Roy as its candidate from the seat, the BJP has relocated its outgoing MP from Raigunj in north Bengal and former central minister Debasree Chaudhuri to try and break the jinx.

The joint Left-Congress challenge to the duo comes from CPM candidate and social activist Saira Shah Halim, daughter-in-law to erstwhile Assembly Speaker Hasim Abdul Halim and niece to actor Naseeruddin Shah, who unsuccessfully contested the 2022 state by-polls from Ballygunge, one of the seven Assembly segments of Kolkata Dakshin.

Despite the absolute domination of Mamata Banerjee, who remained a six-time MP from the seat before moving to state administration, the BJP registered an impressive foothold in the previous edition of the polls.

The saffron camp candidate, Chandra Kumar Bose, grand nephew of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, bagged nearly 4.18 lakh votes last time, the highest that any Opposition candidate managed to garner in four decades, finishing with some 1.5 lakh votes behind Roy.

Much to Banerjee’s chagrin, Bose had managed to take a lead from the chief minister’s own ward during the process.

Bose, who has quit the party since, feels that the dual factors of a pro-Narendra Modi wave five years ago coupled with middle-class’ emotion for Netaji helped him amass more than double the votes compared to what former BJP state president Tathagata Roy managed in 2014.

“I think the TMC’s corruption exposure will have an impact. At the same time, the party’s Hindutva-based divisive politics will obfuscate that advantage since the majority of voters here are averse to it,” Bose told PTI.

Aware that her real fight is against Banerjee, Chaudhuri feels that the so-called Mamata fortress is not impregnable.

“Back in 2019, Mamata Banerjee sought votes from people asking them to consider her as the candidate from all 42 seats of the state. If she is invincible, how did BJP win 18 seats then?” the BJP candidate asked, insisting that corruption in TMC has remained the sole focus of her campaign.

“There’s nothing called a fortress. The people who put you on a pedestal can drag you down no time if you take them for granted,” Chaudhuri asserted.

The seat has three major talking points, believes Maidul Islam, a political thinker and constituency resident.

“Will the middle-class vote, who previously supported Brand Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, return to the Left-Congress kitty? Whether the urban poor remain with Mamata and whether the Muslim voters largely stick to the TMC like they have in the past?” Islam explained.

The analyst said that the TMC’s performance here would also be an audit of the state’s institutional delivery of welfare schemes pitted against people’s confusion over corruption and Sandeshkhali issues.

Those questions didn't bother Priyanka Das, a college student, who was spotted proudly waving a Trinamul flag at a street corner meeting which Banerjee addressed in Kalighat.

“The Opposition is fulfilling its dharma of saying things that they need to say. Didi is still in our hearts and she hasn’t lost an iota of respect,” the student said.

Roy couldn’t agree more. “It’s the people’s emotion for Mamata di, her steadfastness in combating the saffron and red that cuts ice with her followers,” she said.

Halim reposed her faith on the joint election machinery of the Left and the Congress to improve on her capital of nearly 1.6 lakh votes the two parties had bagged last time.

“My ability to speak four languages is vastly resonating with the cosmopolitan electorate of this constituency where I am already grounded. We have made enormous inroads into the BJP vote bank,” she said.

In Jadavpur, the Trinamul has fielded Saayoni Ghosh, an actor and president of the party's youth wing. She faces stiff competition from the CPM's Srijan Bhattacharya and the BJP's Anirban Ganguly.

The Jadavpur seat is historically significant for the Trinamul, as it was from here that a young Mamata Banerjee first made her mark by defeating CPM veteran Somnath Chatterjee in 1984.

In Calcutta North, Trinamul vs ex-Trinamul

In Kolkata Uttar, seasoned parliamentarian and three-term Trinamul MP Sudip Bandyopadhyay faces a tough challenge from Tapas Roy, a four-time Trinamul MLA who switched allegiance to the BJP.

This contest epitomises the internal struggle within the Trinamul, with Bandyopadhyay representing the old guard and Roy symbolising the new wave of leaders.

A Left-Congress nominee, Pradip Bhattacharya, is also in the fray.

Similarly in the Dum Dum Lok Sabha seat, sharp changes in the electoral landscape as compared to five years ago may bolster incumbent Trinamul MP Saugata Roy's chances against a tougher BJP challenge.

With the CPM fielding central committee member Sujan Chakraborty, known in state politics, a triangular contest emerges, potentially benefiting Roy, while the BJP's candidate Shilbhadra Dutta, a former Trinamul MLA, further intensifies the competition.