Pictures by Bibhash Lodh/BS News Agency.
Sanchita Chatterjee, BS News Agency: The BJP is working in full swing to release its list of candidates ahead of the elections. Today (Tuesday), the party announced the names of candidates for 13 additional Assembly constituencies in its fourth-phase list. Consequently, the "Lotus Camp" has now finalized its candidates for the majority of the seats. In this list, Santosh Pathak—who recently quit the Congress party—has been fielded as the candidate for the Chowranghee constituency. In Bagda, North 24 Parganas, Soma Thakur—the wife of Union Minister of State Shantanu Thakur—has been nominated as the candidate. Additionally, Ashutosh Verma has been fielded in Sitai, Debanshu Panda in Falta, Uttam Kumar Banik in Magrahat East, Shyamal Hati in Howrah South, Girijashankar Roy in Natabari, Debashis Dhar in Sonarpur North, and Ranjan Kumar Pal in Panchla. In East Medinipur, Piyushkanti Das has been given the ticket for Chandipur, Pradip Lodha for Garbeta, Arijit Roy for Bansdroni, and Manab Guha for Memari.
Meanwhile, the BJP has also made a change to its candidate for the Maynaguri constituency. Previously, on March 19, the BJP had selected Kaushik Roy as its candidate for this seat. Today (Tuesday), Dalim Roy has been newly nominated as the candidate to replace him.
All things considered, following the release of this list, the BJP has only a few remaining seats for which it still needs to announce candidates. The Trinamool Congress has already announced the names of its candidates for all the seats.
Notably, voting for the state's 294 Assembly seats is scheduled to take place on April 23 and 29, and the results will be declared on May 4.