Withover one-fourth of the booths registering a polling percentage above 90, WestBengal's Nandigram has seen the highest turnout in recent years.
ElectionCommission data on Saturday shows that Nandigram registered a pollingpercentage of 88.01, marginally better than the last three elections in thestate.
Abooth wise detailed summary released by the Commission showed that though EastMidnapore district recorded a polling percentage of 87.4 but Nandigram had avoter turnout of 88.01 per cent, which is a shade better than the districtaverage. Not only the district average but the democratic euphoria of thepeople has overshadowed its performance in the last few elections.
Inthe Lok Sabha polls in 2014 and 2019 Nandigram recorded a polling percentage of85.7 and 85 respectively and in the last Assembly polls it had a pollingpercentage of 86.9. Only in the 2011 Assembly polls when Mamata Banerjee sweptto power riding on the land reforms movement, Nandigram with 88.3 per centfared better than this election.
"Thereis no doubt that the high-voltage election duel between Chief Minister MamataBanerjee and Suvendu Adhikari mobilised the voters to polling booths but thereare other factors that also should be taken into consideration. There arearound 25,7,000 voters in Nandigram of which 22,7,000 voters have turned out toexercise their franchise.
Accordingto the data available, of these voters, 54,000 are Muslim voters and the rest1,73,000 are Hindu voters. This itself shows that 83 per cent of Muslim votershave cast their franchise where more than 92 per cent Hindu voters haveexercised their democratic right. In a place like Nandigram, where the votershave been polarised this will definitely become a deciding factor,"psephologist Biswanath Chakraborty said.
Afactual analysis will also support the theory. If we go according to theelection commission data, 89 of the 355 booths of Nandigram registered apolling percentage above 90 and interestingly enough, most of these booths arelocated in Hindu-dominated areas.
ECdata shows that Veturia Kohinoor SSK in Nandigram Block 1 recorded the highestturnout of 96.4 per cent followed by Julpai Gopalkrishna Ambika Golap SmritiVidyamandir, Barunisnan Primary School, Bar Nakchirachar primary school thatrecorded a polling percentage of 94. In addition to this, there are at least 15more polling centres that recorded a polling percentage of above 93.
Interestinglyenough, Birulia Paschim Primary School where CM Banerjee had an accident duringher election campaign, recorded a polling percentage slightly more than 90.Alternatively, the Boyal Mukhtar Primary School, where the Chief Minister spenttwo hours on the day of the election and also had a heated exchange of wordswith the central forces, had a polling percentage of 88.
Sofar as the districts are concerned, Bankura had a polling percentage of 86.9followed by South 24 Parganas and West Midnapore that had a polling percentageof 86.7 and 83.8 respectively. So far as the constituencies are concerned, KatulpurAC in Bankura had the highest polling percentage of 90, followed by Indus (89.3per cent) in Bankura; Chandipur (89.2 per cent) and Nandakumar (89.2 per cent)in East Midnapore and Pingla (89 per cent) in West Midnapore.