West Bengal witnessed an encouraging voter turnout of 73 percent until 5 pm on Monday across seven Lok Sabha constituencies, as confirmed by an Election Commission official.
Among the constituencies, Arambag parliamentary seat reported the highest polling percentage at 76.90%, closely followed by Bangaon at 75.73%, and Uluberia at 74.50%.
Hooghly and Sreerampur registered 74.17% and 71.18% respectively, while Howrah and Barrackpore recorded 68.84% each, stated the official.
Polling commenced at 7 am and will continue until 6 pm.
By 4:30 pm, the state CEO's office had received 1,913 complaints related to the ongoing polling, the official mentioned.
A staggering total of 1,25,23,702 voters, including 61,72,034 women and 348 third-gender individuals, are eligible to cast their votes across 13,481 polling stations.
To ensure a smooth electoral process, the commission has marked over 57% of the polling stations as sensitive and deployed over 60,000 personnel from central forces, in addition to around 30,000 policemen.
This deployment of security forces exceeds that of any previous round of elections in the state.
A total of 88 candidates are contesting in the fifth phase, with Bongaon witnessing the highest number of contestants at 15.
Union Minister Shantanu Thakur is among the prominent figures vying for victory, facing TMC's Biswajit Das.