As voting began for five constituencies in West Bengal in the third phase of the Lok Sabha elections on Tuesday, three Trinamool Congress (TMC) workers were injured after a crude bomb was hurled at them. The incident took place in Domkal municipality in Murshidabad.
The five seats going to the polls are Balurghat, Malda North, Malda South, Jangipur and Murshidabad where 80,23,846 voters will decide the fate of 61 candidates.
In Balurghat, there is an intense battle between sitting Trinamool MP Arpita Ghosh, BJP nominee Sukanta Majumdar and Ranen Barman of the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), a constituent of the Left Front.
The mega electoral exercise for the third and largest phase of the 2019 elections kicked off on Tuesday, with polling getting underway across the 117 Lok Sabha constituencies in 15 states and Union Territories.
West Bengal which has a history of violent clashes is going to polls in all the seven phases.
In the second phase, on April 18, an attack on a CPI-M candidate and the destruction of an EVM were among several incidents of poll violence reported from three constituencies in West Bengal.
The vehicle of Mohammad Salim, the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) MP from Raiganj, was damaged at Islampur. Salim accused Trinamool Congress (TMC) workers of the attack. He also alleged that the police were “mute spectators”.
At some places, stones and crude bombs were hurled by TMC supporters and BJP supporters at each other.