The fear of a sudden lockdown because of the ongoing surge in Covid cases and loss of business and employment as a consequence weighed heavily on voters across the trading hubs of Calcutta as they cast their vote on Thursday.
Many were apprehensive of a lockdown immediately after the declaration of the election results “to make up for the mismanagement” of Covid-19 across the country.
Traders after traders in Burrabazar said how a sudden lockdown, like the one imposed in March 2020, could land their already troubled business in greater jeopardy.
There were some whose business had been reduced to a third of what it had been and their concerns about unrealised dues and wasted stocks were widespread.
A strikingly poor turnout of Hindi-speaking voters in three of the seven seats Jorasanko, Maniktala and Shyampukur in Calcutta on Thursday raised an alarm in the state BJP, said a senior office-bearer of the party.
Hindi-speaking population is considered the traditional vote bank of the BJP which had been claiming it would sweep most seats in Calcutta.
According to the Election Commission of India, the seven seats recorded 57.53 per cent turnout till 5pm.
“We weren’t prepared for this. The fear of contracting the novel coronavirus has prevented these people from coming out to vote. The party depends massively on the Marwari and Bihari communities in these areas. We were hopeful of bagging a chunk of the votes of these communities, but their turnout has been unexpectedly low,” a BJP worker in the Jorasanko constituency and a Marwari himself said.
Image used for representational purpose only
KOLKATA: A joint team of Kolkata Police, Bengaluru Police and Bongaon Police arrested the kingpin of a gang of traffickers from Bangladesh, Prafulla Naik, and two of his associates Jagdish Ghosh and Tinku Biswas.
According to Bengaluru Police, Naik had been trapping women from Bangladesh and Bengal by promising them lucrative jobs in beauty parlours or sales or by initiating ‘relationships’ with them. Once the women were in his net, two women from his gang, whom he would introduce as his girlfriends, used to set up a trap and sell the victims to brothels in south India.