Voting begins in West Bengal: King of bling Bappi Lahiri in fray

Kolkata: Polling in nine parliamentary constituencies began peacefully in West Bengal in the third phase of the Lok Sabha elections in the state today. The seats where polling is on include Howrah, Hooghly, Serampore, Bolpur, Arambagh, Burdwan East, Burdwan-Durgapur, Birbhum and Uluberia. [caption id=“attachment_1502555” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Bappi Lahiri is contesting from the BJP: AFP[/caption] The prominent candidates in the fray today are BJP’s Bappi Lahiri in Serampore, journalist-turned-politician Chandan Mitra in Hooghly and actor George Baker in Howrah, who carry the party’s hopes to score big for the first time in the state. Among Trinamool Congress candidates are sitting MPs Satabdi Roy from Birbhum, Kalyan Banerjee from Serampore and Sultan Ahmed from Uluberia besides Prasun Banerjee from Howrah, a former India soccer player. For the CPI-M, it will be a fight to hold on to four seats - Bolpur, Burdwan East, Burdwan-Durgapur and Arambagh among the nine which it had won the last time. Congress candidate Abdul Mannan is also in the fray in Serampore. There are also 13 women contestants in the election in which 1,39,43,063 voters will exercise their franchise. PTI