။ Lok Sabha Vote, 2009

န CPI(M) demands constitution of assembly for Andaman and Nicobar
Port Blair, 4 April : CPI(M) is contesting the only seat of Andaman & Nicobar in the union territory of Andaman & Nicobar Islands. Tapan Bepari, state secretariat member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and former president of the state unit of the All India Kisan Sabha is the candidate for this seat. Tapan belongs to the weaker section of the settlers’ family. He is a lawyer by profession.
This constituency has about 3-4 lakhs of voters. Nicobar group of islands is predominantly a tribal dominated area with about 20 thousand registered voters. The Andaman group of islands is largely populated by settlers. It can be divided into north, middle and southern parts. While Bengali speaking people dominate in north and middle parts, Tamil speaking people dominate the southern part. The southern part of Andaman also has people having Telugu and Malayalam as their mother tongue. The city of Port Blair lies in the south.
>
Rebel zones 'Junglemohal' get 2 hours less to vote
Jhargram, 3 April : Voting will close two hours early in Maoist pockets in Jhargram and Purulia. The official polling time is 7am to 5pm, but in Bandwan and Binpur in the Jhargram seat, and Joypur, Bagmundi and Balarampur in the Purulia constituency, polling will end at 3pm because of security reasons.
Debashis Sen, the state’s chief electoral officer, completed a tour of the Maoist-infested areas before making the announcement today. He also said a resident from each polling booth area would be selected by the district magistrates to act as a “volunteer” on polling day. Each will be given the phone number of the local polling official to be contacted in case any untoward incident takes place.
>
CEO pleads with villagers not to boycott the vote
Ranibandh, 1 April : In the remote jungles of Ranibandh in southern Bankura, WB chief electoral officer Debashis Sen was pursuing a very different trail this morning. Far removed from reading out the Election Commission’s diktats from his office in Kolkata. He was listening to the complaints of villagers in this Maoist-infested pocket of south Bengal and subtly persuading them not to boycott this year’s general election to protest “lack of development” in their area.The region, which includes adjoining Purulia and West Midnapore, will go to the polls on 30 April. Boycott of polls is not uncommon here. Many villagers in this tribal belt had not voted in the 2006 Assembly elections either.The chief electoral officer, who stayed overnight at Mukutmanipur, will tour Purulia tomorrow.
>
Bengal's Maoists issue threat on CEO's Lalgarh visit
Howrah, 1 April : On the day when WB's chief electoral officer Debashish Sen is on the way to visit troubled Lalgarh in West Midnapore, CPI (Maoist) state secretary Kanchan issued a statement claiming that Maoists will continue to remain in the heart of the people of Jangalmahal.Kanchan said that Red rebels still don't believe in the election process. He said CPI (Maoist) and Peoples' Liberation Guerrilla army will lead from the front in case of police action in Jangalmahal. The statement read that the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government was preparing for another mass-killing by sending police to Lalgarh. Since November 2008, police have not been able to enter the area.
>
North West Bengal's tribal body to boycott polls
Siliguri, 1 April : Akhil Bharatiya Adivashi Vikash Parishad (ABAVP), a tribal body in West Bengal's northern hills, Wednesday announced that they will boycott the Lok Sabha elections in the Terai-Dooars region of the state.'We had given a memorandum to the Jalpaiguri administration over a month back, asking for a separate constituency at Terai-Dooars to be reserved for Scheduled Tribes,' John Barla, ABAVP's Terai and Dooars co-ordination committee president, said here. Barla said about 60 percent of the total population of Terai-Dooars are tribals.