Asansol: Reopening factories closed for years, addressing drinking water scarcity in rural pockets and reining in the illegal mining menace in abandoned collieries are the primary issues for the people of Asansol Lok Sabha constituency in Bengal.
The region cradles the mining and industrial belt of the state, with Raniganj, Pandaveswar and Jamuria Assembly segments housing coal mines and Kulti serving as the home to some of the bigger factories.
Asansol, which borders Jharkhand, has a significant percentage of the Hindi-speaking population, mostly migrant workers from Bihar and UP employed in the mines and factories.
Asansol goes to polls in the fourth phase on May 13.
While the Trinamool Congress (TMC) has repeated Bollywood superstar Shatrughan Sinha aka ‘Bihari Babu’ as its candidate for this seat, the BJP settled for its veteran leader Surendrajeet Singh Ahluwalia who was born and raised in the city. The CPI(M) has fielded Jahanara Khan, a debutant in Lok Sabha polls, in the seat that is also home to a fair number of tribals. Sinha won the 2022 by-elections here by over 3 lakh votes after BJP MP Babul Supriyo vacated the seat, which he secured in 2014 and 2019, and switched over to the TMC.
Sinha expressed confidence about retaining the seat by a greater margin this time.
“I will win more support from people in the constituency this election,” he said.
The BJP took a while to officially name Ahluwalia, fondly called ‘Sardarji’ by many, for the Asansol seat after Bhojpuri singer Pawan Singh stepped aside from the contest.
In the 2019 elections, Ahluwalia won the neighbouring Bardhaman-Durgapur seat, where the BJP has fielded its former state president Dilip Ghosh this time.
Ahluwalia, also a former Rajya Sabha MP, had won the Darjeeling Lok Sabha seat in northern Bengal in 2014.
He won the 2019 elections by a slender margin of 18,540 votes and managed to deliver for his party only one out of the seven Assembly seats in Bardhaman-Durgapur during the 2021 state polls.
Ahluwalia faces the litmus test of obfuscating TMC’s gains in Asansol, where five out of seven Assembly segments went to the Mamata Banerjee-led party in 2021.