Twenty-eight women polling staff, who travelled 12 hours by bus on Wednesday with EVMs to reach polling stations in East Midnapore's Kolaghat from the collection centre in Tamluk, fell ill from the intense heat.

All 28 women, assigned duties in seven booths of the Panskura Purba constituency, were exhausted and three vomited on reaching Kolaghat around 8pm.

They had started their journey from the Shaheed Matangini Girls College in Tamluk, 24km away, around 8am.

Their troubles did not end on reaching Kolaghat. Put up in schools-turned-booths, they discovered they had to share bathrooms with the central forces already put up there. The bathrooms were dirty and lacked enough water, the women complained.

Voting will be held in a total of 5,040 booths in the East Midnapore district on Thursday. Of these, women polling workers will be present at 1,253 booths.

Presiding officer Sabina Aktar, the headmistress of a secondary school in Haldia, said angrily: "During the training, we were told that women poll staff would get booths in their own Assembly constituency. But I have been sent to Kolaghat, which is around 100km away from my home."

"I arrived at the Tamluk centre at 8am, and we reached our booth at 8pm. The journey was only 24km long. But the terrain was bad. We waited in a forest for a long time in the dark, unable to find the way. There was no security guard in our bus."

"When I reached the polling station, exhausted, I found that our booth was in a small children's education centre, without enough fans. We have to share the bathroom with jawans of the central forces. There is no environment to sleep peacefully. We have to stay awake at night."

The women protested in front of Vikramaditya Bar, the sector officer in charge of the seven booths. "Women are facing problems due to the negligence of the district administration," Bar said. "We repeatedly asked the administration to lodge the women at good schools. But it seems this is like a lottery. Some women have got accommodation in good schools, some in bad ones."

Contacted, East Midnapore district magistrate Niranjan Kumar claimed that care had been taken to put up women poll staff in good schools.