Bengal Assembly ready to hold presidential poll

The West Bengal Assembly is geared up to hold the presidential election tomorrow, two ballot boxes having already reached the city.
Apart from the ballot boxes, special pens for the electors to mark their votes also arrived, a senior officer of the Election Commission said.
"MPs and MLAs will not be allowed to carry their personal pens inside the voting chamber and will have to mark their ballots with a specially-designed marker," he said.
Serial-numbered pens with violet ink have been supplied by the EC to see to it that only the writing instrument issued by the Commission is used by voters.

The EC took the step following the ink controversy during the Rajya Sabha polls in Haryana last year.
The Commission for the first time has also prepared special posters containing the do's and don't's for the electors. Green-coloured ballot papers will be there for the MPs and pink for the MLAs to cast votes," the officer said.

Besides two representatives, one each for the two presidential candidates, who will be present during the polling, armed policemen belonging to the Kolkata Police will be posted inside the House tomorrow.
The ballot boxes will leave for New Delhi amid tight security on Tuesday.

In the presidential poll, NDA nominee Ram Nath Kovind is pitted against Congress-led combined opposition nominee Meira Kumar.
The counting will be undertaken on July 20.
A total of 32 polling stations - one in Parliament House and one each in the state legislative assemblies, have been set up.
As per the EC, among state Assemblies, Uttar Pradesh has the maximum amount of women voters followed by West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh while Nagaland has with no women MPs or MLAs.