Kolkata: Chinatown

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Elections

Bhagaban Chandra Narada Bala Khatik School, Tangra

Zeeshan Jawed, April 11, 2021: The Times of India

Bhagaban Chandra Narada Bala Khatik School in Kolkata’s Tangra is an ordinary government school like thousands others in West Bengal.

But come elections and this modest school with five classrooms acquires special status. It becomes the only polling station with over 500 ethnic Chinese voters on the rolls, the highest anywhere in the country, according to members of the Chinese community in Tangra’s Chinatown. TMC even set up a polling camp 200 metres from the school, which had an all-Chinese team to guide Chinese voters who do not comprehend Bengali clearly.

The majority of Chinatown is a part of Kasba, which polled on Saturday. Though there are several polling stations, almost all ethnic Chinese vote at Bhagaban Chandra School. “A very small part is in Entally constituency, but there are very few Chinese voters now,” said Joseph Chen, a local businessman sitting in the camp of one of the parties and guiding voters in Chinese. Parties have even started writing wall graffiti and printing posters in Chinese.

The school, set up in the 1950s, has been witness to the rise and decline of the Chinese in the city. According to Chen, there were more than 2,000 voters in the polling station till 2004. However, only 523 Chinese voters are eligible this time, and almost 80% voted on Saturday. A steady exodus of Chinese in the past few decades has shrunk the community from close to 1,00,000 to 1,20,000 in the1950s to 2,000 to 2,500 today.