Barrackpore to witness triangular contest as Raj Chakraborty seeks second term

Kolkata: Barrackpore Assembly Constituency is all set to witness a triangular electoral battle in the upcoming Assembly polls as the current MLA and Trinamool Congress candidate, film director Raj (Raju) Chakraborty, is seeking a second term as the legislator.

While Chakraborty is banking on the Mamata Banerjee government’s populist welfare schemes and local development works carried out in his Constituency, BJP candidate Kaustav Bagchi has thrown a challenge of defeating Chakraborty with a margin of 50,000 votes. Chakraborty, while carrying out his election campaign, repeatedly said that people will vote purely on the basis of development. He is also eyeing a better winning margin this time.

“I have implemented all the works undertaken by the Mamata Banerjee government in my Constituency. A great deal of development has been done in every field—be it roads, drainage systems or lights. Some work is yet to be done in the future. My target would be to increase the winning margin,” Chakraborty said while conducting campaigns.

He claimed that SIR will put the BJP on the back foot and the ruling party will secure more Assembly seats than it had in 2021.

On the other hand, Bagchi, who is a lawyer, claimed that he has been getting huge responses from the people while carrying out his election campaigns. Stating that he has grown up in this region, Bagchi assured that he will present a better developed Barrackpore if he wins. He also claimed that a section of Left party leaders and supporters were backing him and that it would be reflected in the poll results.

The CPI(M) candidate, Suman Ranjan Bandyopadhyay, has, however, been attacking both the Trinamool Congress and the BJP candidate while undertaking election campaigns along the lanes and bylanes of Barrackpore. He is also hopeful of making a “turnaround” in this seat this time.

Statistics show that in the 2021 Assembly elections, Chakraborty won in this Constituency, beating Chandramani Shukla of the BJP by a margin of 9,222 votes, which was 6.3 per cent of the total votes cast.

He had a vote share of 47.08 per cent in this seat in 2021. Shukla had secured over 40 per cent vote share at the time. The BJP’s vote share went up in the 2019 and 2024 Lok Sabha elections, especially in some pockets, which is a concern for the ruling party.

In 2024, Trinamool’s Partha Bhowmick became the MP from Barrackpore by defeating BJP’s Arjun Singh.