West Bengal Assembly Election: Voting for 30 seats in five districts on 27 March; full list of constituencies in first phase of polls

Thirty constituencies in West Bengal will go to the polls on 27 March, which will be the first of the eight-phased election process. The state has been under the All India Trinamool Congress' rule for the past 10 years and party chief Mamata Banerjee is seeking a third straight term as chief minister in these elections.

She faces a double challenge with the Congress and Left parties' alliance on one side and the Bharatiya Janata Party-lead National Democratic Alliance on the other.

The pitched battle ahead of the polls saw an alleged attack on the chief minister, questions being raised on the fairness of the Election Commission of India and many veteran leaders switching political sides just ahead of the polls. There were also instances of political violence after a local BJP worker was found dead in the Cooch Behar district.

Another such instance was reported from South 24 Parganas on Thursday, where TMC workers clashed with Communist Party of India (Marxist's) cadres.

A history of political violence was one of the reasons cited by the Election Commission to spread out the Assembly elections in the state across an unprecedented eight phases. The state has 294 Assembly seats, and thus Central forces and election observers will keep an eye on an average of 37 Assembly seats in every phase.

However, in the first phase, only 30 seats are going to the polls. These are spread across tribal-dominated Purulia, Bankura, Jhargram, Purba Medinipur (Part 1) and Paschim Medinipur (Part 1) districts, which were once considered the citadel of the Left in the state.

In the 2016 and 2011 Assembly elections, these 30 constituencies had overwhelmingly voted for TMC but BJP had swept them in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and has since been running a pitched campaign to make inroads in the eastern state.

Here is a list of constituencies that will vote in the first phase on Saturday:

In the eight-phase West Bengal elections, the BJP is contesting 293 seats while it has left one seat for its alliance partner All Jharkhand Students Union (AJSU) headed by Ashutosh Mahto.

The TMC, on the other hand, is contesting 290 seats while it has given three seats to Bimal Gurung’s Gorkha Janmukti Morcha, which has a presence in the hilly regions of North Bengal.

The Third Front is an alliance between the Congress, CPM, CPI and Indian Secular Front. The Left is fighting on 137 seats while Congress is contesting on 91 and Abbas Siddiqui’s ISF on 28.