Polling personnel, mostly state government employees, who have been assigned polling duty, staged demonstrations on Saturday demanding deployment of central forces at every booth during the panchayat election, scheduled on 8 July.

The demonstrations took place in front of Alliah University at Park Circus, where they had gathered for election duty training programme. The agitating workers demanded adequate security coverage under central forces for their safety, from the day of joining election duty and the day of counting, likely to be held on 10-11 July.

They also demanded security till they return home after the counting is over. The ministry of home affairs on Thursday night sent 315 companies of central forces and state armed police (SAP) force to Bengal for rural body polls after the West Bengal State Election Commission (WBSEC) requisitioned on Thursday for 822 companies.

With deployment of the 315 companies of central forces, the state got 335 companies in all since Tuesday. Earlier, with the request of the state poll panel, the home ministry had sent 22 companies of paramilitary forces.

Central forces comprises Central Reserve Police Force (CRFF), Border Security Force (BSF), Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), Railway Protection Force (RPF), IndoTibetan Border Police (ITBP) personnel and State Armed Police (SAPs) personnel are from states like Assam, Bihar, Odisha, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Tripura, Mizoram, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya and Maharashtra, have already started area dominations in different districts as confidence building measures among voters particularly at the backdrop of 10 people being killed in pollrelated political clash violence.

On Saturday, the central forces started a route march in violence-ravaged Bhangar in South 24 Parganas. On Friday evening, the state election commission requisitioned another 485 companies of central forces from Delhi. The polling personnel, while demonstrating, alleged that the number of central forces sent by the home ministry is absolutely inadequate for more than 61,000 polling booths across districts in the state.

Political analysts felt that there might be a political strategy behind the BJP-led central government’s decision to offer 315 companies of forces to Bengal initially.