Kolkata, April 17 (IANS). The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Friday announced that the number of counting centers has been reduced to 87 for the two-phase elections in West Bengal later this month.
The number of counting centers in the 2016 state assembly elections was 90, which was later increased to 108 in 2021. This year, this number has been reduced to 87, according to the notification issued by the Commission on Friday afternoon.
Of the 87 counting centres, maximum 12 centers will be in South 24 Parganas, followed by 8 in North 24 Parganas and 6 in Hooghly. The least number of centers will be in Kalimpong, Alipurduar and Jhargram, where there will be one center each.
Voting in West Bengal will be held in two phases on April 23 and April 29. The counting of votes will take place on May 4 and the results will be declared.
Meanwhile, the Commission on Friday said that till 9 pm on Tuesday, a total of 18,38,572 cases of property defacement have been removed.
Of these, 15,80,892 cases were related to defacement of public property, and the remaining 2,25,170 cases were related to defacement of private property.
The Commission said that extensive operations are underway to remove unauthorized political advertisements. As per latest reports, defacement has been removed extensively on public and private properties in all the districts, and District Election Officers have issued certificates of removal of defacement from all public properties under their jurisdiction.
According to another press release of the Commission, the value of items seized so far under this operation in West Bengal is Rs 427 crore. Of this amount, Rs 21 crore is cash, Rs 81 crore is liquor, Rs 100 crore is narcotics, Rs 54 crore is precious metals and Rs 172 crore is free gifts and other items.
The Commission attributed these seizures to 2,728 Flying Squad Teams (FSTs) and 3,142 Static Surveillance Teams (SSTs) deployed to conduct operations in West Bengal.
–IANS
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