Distribution of minority community votes looms large in North Malda

Malda: The repeat of 2019, the splitting of minority votes acted to the advantage of the BJP with Khagen Murmu sailing through with a lead of over 70,000 votes till the time this report was filed.

Trinamool Congress’ (TMC) Prasun Banerjee, former Superintendent of Police in Malda, who has led a vigorous campaign across North Malda, gaining support from minority-dominated and tribal areas is to finish at the second spot . Mostak Alam, the sole Muslim candidate in the triangular race, is at no 3.

The North Malda Parliamentary Constituency (PC) came into existence in 2009 as a new seat. It has more voters from the minority community than others.

This seat has witnessed its fourth edition of Parliamentary elections. As in 2019, this time also the distribution of minority community votes has gone to emerge as a table-turner.

In 2019, Murmu bagged nearly 5.10 lakh votes while Mausam Noor (TMC) bagged almost 4.25 lakh and Isha Khan Chowdhury (Congress) 3.05 lakh. A total of 13,46,657 voters turned out to booths out of 16,85,955 in that year. The said splitting was very sharp as Noor and Isha were from the same family.

In general elections 2024, BJP retained their sitting MP as their candidate belonging to the tribal community. Murmu defected to BJP from CPI(M) and managed to retain his Parliamentary membership for the 2

consecutive terms.

This time a total of 1415718 voters turned out to booths, including

7,41,887 females.

TMC along with the rest of the state campaigned here on stressing upon the state government schemes, including Lakshmir Bhandar but that has not been seen to be working in this PC. Among the 7 Assembly segments, 3 were bagged by BJP in 2021 Assembly polls while the other 4 were won by TMC.