Battle ground Bhatpara: TMC intensifies campaign against BJP amid voter deletion, jute woes

Kolkata: Bhatpara Assembly Constituency in North 24-Parganas, once known as “Bhatta-Palli” for its Brahmin scholars, has witnessed violence and bloodshed in recent elections. 

A former hub of Sanskrit learning, it lost its sheen over time. In the first five decades after Independence, Congress and the Communist parties alternated power, winning six times each. Once a thriving jute mill town, Bhatpara now often makes news for the wrong reasons. In the 2026 Assembly polls, the TMC is going all out to win the seat, hoping the mass deletion of largely Hindi-speaking voters may impact the outcome and work against the BJP.

Arjun Singh, a four-term TMC MLA from Bhatpara (2001–2016), later joined the BJP and became Barrackpore MP in 2019. He returned to the TMC in 2022, switched back to the BJP in 2024, and lost the Barrackpore Lok Sabha seat to TMC’s Partha Bhowmick.

Arjun Singh’s son, Pawan Singh, won the Bhatpara seat in the 2019 bypoll as a BJP candidate, defeating TMC’s Madan Mitra by 23,104 votes, and retained it in 2021 by beating TMC’s Jitendra Shaw by 13,684 votes. He is contesting again on a BJP ticket against TMC’s Amit Gupta. The ruling TMC has taken the seat as a challenge, intensifying grassroots outreach with door-to-door campaigns and ward-level programmes since March 22. Barrackpore organisational district president Partha Bhowmick recently held a key meeting with leaders from the Bhatpara municipality areas.

TMC is emphasising jute mill issues, blaming the Centre for the industry’s decline. Candidate Amit Gupta said Bhatpara’s economy depends on jute mills, which he claimed have been systematically destroyed by the BJP government at the Centre.

“We have carried out a protest against the Centre’s policy. The jute industry here has to be revived. The Centre has been cancelling orders of jute bags, instead depending on plastic packaging. They are depriving the jute mill workers,” Gupta, who is confident of winning, said. According to ECI data, Bhatpara had around 1.54 lakh voters in 2021, up from 149,164 in 2019. Muslims constitute 23.40 per cent of the electorate, while the SC and ST account for 8.84 per cent and 1.11 per cent respectively.