Kolkata, June 24: The central armed forces personnel, who have already arrived in West Bengal for the July 8 panchayat election, will start conducting route marches from Saturday, as per State Election Commission (SEC) sources.

A total of 337 companies of central armed forces have already reached the state. Commission sources said that the route march will start with the available personnel from Saturday only and as more companies turn up, they will be involved in the process. West Bengal Panchayat Elections 2023: Calcutta High Court Rejects National Human Right Commission’s Proposal To Appoint Independent Observer for Polls.

The SEC, as insisted by a division bench of the Calcutta High Court, has requested for 822 companies or around 82,200 central personnel of central armed forces for the rural civic body polls.

The available central forces personnel in the state are a mix of companies from Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), Indo Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) and Railway Protection Force (RPF). West Bengal Panchayat Elections 2023: Trinamool Congress Faces Revolt Over Candidate Selection From Two Heavyweight MLAs.

On Friday, the Additional Solicitor General Ashoke Kumar Chakrabory informed the court that the Union Home Ministry has no difficulty in deploying over 82,000 central armed forces personnel as sought by the West Bengal SEC.

However, at the same time, he had argued that such a huge deployment would have been more feasible had there been a five-phase poll this time as well as it happened in 2013.

In fact, Leader of Opposition in West Bengal Assembly Suvendu Adhikari as well as the CPI(M) central committee member Dr Sujan Chakraborty too have questioned on whether little over 82,000 personnel would be enough for a single-phase poll considering that the number of voters, districts, polling stations and polling booths have increase considerably since 2013.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jun 24, 2023 01:33 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).