Development the key word in TMC’s efforts to wrest Keshpur from Left Front

The development work and the “political violence free” life for people are the two main factors that have provided a ground to the Trinamool Congress to take away the Keshpur Assembly seat from the Left Front.

Keshpur had always been in the headlines for violence for protesting against the alleged atrocities of “harmads”. The place was once known to be the red bastion and CPI(M) had managed to retain the seat even when Trinamool Congress had formed the government in 2011.

The scenario has changed completely, politically in the past four and a half years. With the state government’s effort to bring an overall development of the area despite losing the election in 2011 has brought a sea of change in the constituency both politically and development wise.

In 2011, Rameswar Dolui of CPI(M) had won with a margin of 33,842 votes defeating the Congress candidate Rajanikanta Dolui. Though Trinamool Congress had failed to bag the seat in 2011, the political atmosphere started taking a turn within a few months after the election.

Trinamool Congress had made a remarkable result in the Panchayat Elections held in 2013 in Keshpur and since then the party had not looked back. In 2014 Lok Sabha poll, Trinamool Congress had bagged 1,49,401 from Keshpur Assembly constituency while Left Front got only 32,541 votes.

Keshpur Assembly constituency is under Ghatal Parliamentary constituency from where Trinamool Congress’ Deepak Adhikary, actor Dev, had won the election in 2014 by defeating Santosh Rana of CPI.

Based on the results of the last Panchayat and Lok Sabha elections Trinamool Congress is much ahead of their Opposition. Trinamool Congress candidate Seuli Saha is quite confident of her win. She will be dedicating the party’s win from the seat to one and only the party’s supremo Mamata Banerjee.

It may be recalled that 164 Trinamool Congress workers and supporters were killed, thousands of houses were looted and set on fire in Keshpur since early 2000. People feared to come out of their houses even during the day as the gun trotting toughs of CPI(M) “harmads” used to set up reign of terror.

With the change of guard in the state, peace prevails in the area where the main livelihood of people is agriculture.

In the past five years besides taking steps to restore peace the state government took steps for proper irrigation to assure sufficient supply of water for agriculture.

Moreover, the work of Ghatal Master Plan has started for which Rs 2,000 crore was sanctioned. Flood had been a regular feature of the area every year incurring a huge loss of the farmers. The place will not get flooded with completion of the work of Ghatal Master Plan. Moreover, an ITI college, kishanmandi and krishibazar have come up in the area that helped the people immensely. In 2011, Saha had contested from Haldia in East Midnapore and won the election. This time she is contesting from Keshpur which is in West Midnapore against the two time CPI(M) MLA Romeswar Dolui and CPI(M) had been winning in the seat since 1982.

The election here is scheduled to take place on April 11 and 232443 voters including 111580 women will be exercising their power.