By IANS,
Naxalbari (West Bengal) : Naxalbari recorded a high 84.55 percent voter turnout in the first phase of the West Bengal assembly elections Monday.
“Polling was peaceful and incident free,” said an election official.
Now part of the Matigara-Naxalbari seat formed out of parts of Phansideoa and Siliguri seats in West Bengal’s Darjeeling district, the area saw long queues of voters outside the booths. Polling continued even after the scheduled 5 p.m. close.
Naxalbari once cradled the Maoist revolution which was supposed to sweep India.
It saw a violent peasant uprising in May 1967, leading to an all-India Maoist revolt whose adherents came to be known after the area — Naxalites.
The May 25, 1967 incident led to the killing of nine people and two children in police firing in Bengaijot.
The Maoist movement was not an issue in the campaign speeches in the constituency of 192,913 voters.
The constituency witnessed a five-cornered contest, with the main battle seemingly confined between Jharen Roy of the ruling Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) and Sankar Malakar of the Congress.
The three other candidates include Dipu Haldar of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) or CPI-ML, the inheritor of the Naxalbari legacy.