Fifteen minutes before polling for the 144 wards in the Calcutta Municipal Corporation started, former CPM MP Samik Lahiri wrote to the district magistrate of South 24-Parganas to lodge an official complaint about the party’s polling agents in two wards being roughed up and driven out of booths even before the first voters had queued.

“Looting of votes started much before starting of the poll process. The ruling party is casting false votes even before the official poll started,” Lahiri alleged in his complaint to the magistrate who is also returning officer.

In his complaint, Lahiri gave the instances of booths 2,3 and 4 in ward 102 and booths 17 to 23 in ward 110 where the party’s polling agents faced the brunt of the ruling party’s might.

As the gates to the polling station’s were opened for the day, the floodgates for complaints of false-votes, voter intimidation, coercion of booth agents were reported from all across the city.

Till 9.00 am, the voter turnout was a mere 10.86 per cent.

Similar complaints of agents from Opposition parties' agents not being allowed have been reported from booths 23, 31, 38 and 39 of ward 82.

At ward 45, one of the two wards the Congress is hoping to retain, the party nominee, Santosh Pathak, got involved in an altercation with the Trinamul nominee, Shakti Prasad Singh.

At the offices of AG Bengal, where polling was being held, the Congress alleged false voters were being mobilised.

Pathak, who has been the councillor from the same ward for over a decade now, is in a prestige battle as the Trinamul is determined to wrest the ward to make the entire Chowringhee constituency (of which ward 45 is a part) under its control.

The Congress nominee from ward 36 alleged that despite the Calcutta High Court’s directive of having closed circuit television cameras in all the booths, cameras were not working in the booths.

In the 2015 CMC elections, the Trinamul had won 114 of the 144 wards. This time the Trinamul is expecting to win 135 wards.