North Bengal: Trinamool replaces 2019 poll candidates in 8 seats for Lok Sabha elections
Kolkata: Not a single among the eight candidates of Trinamool Congress (TMC) from North Bengal who contested in the last Lok Sabha are in the fray for the upcoming parliamentary polls this year, according to the list of candidates announced on Sunday.
Jagadish Chandra Basunia will be contesting from Cooch Behar seat in place of Paresh Chandra Adhikari, Prakash Chik Baraik will fight in the Alipurduar seat instead of Dasrath Tirkey, Nirmal Chandra Roy will contest in Jalpaiguri replacing Bijoy Chandra Barman, Gopal Lama has been fielded from Darjeeling in place of Amar Singh Rai, Krishna Kalyani will fight in Raiganj seat instead of Kanaia Lal Agarwal, Biplab Mitra will fight in the Balurghat seat instead of Arpita Ghosh, former IPS officer Prasun Banerjee will contest from Malda North replacing Mausam Noor while Shanawaz Ali Rehman will fight from Malda South instead of Dr. Moazzem Hossain.
In the last Lok Sabha polls, TMC lost all eight seats in North Bengal with seven going to the BJP and one to the Congress. In the 2021 Assembly polls, TMC won with a huge mandate. BJP’s results in North Bengal were satisfactory. In Alipurduar, the saffron party took the lead in all the Assembly seats. In Jalpaiguri and Darjeeling, BJP took lead in six of the seven Assembly seats. In Raiganj the saffron brigade secured a lead in four of the seven seats. In Balurghat, TMC scored a lead in four assembly segments but BJP’s lead in three seats surpassed the total number of votes secured by TMC candidates. The situation was the same in Malda South too where BJP managed a lead in three Assembly seats out of seven but ended on the winning side. Even in the Assembly constituencies of former cabinet ministers Rabindranath Ghosh (Natabari), Goutam Deb (Dabgram Fulbari) and Binay Krishna Barman (Mathabhanga), BJP managed a lead. However in the Dhupguri bypolls in September 2023 , Nirmal Chandra Roy turned the tide in favour of TMC by defeating BJP’s Tapasi Roy by over 4500 votes. TMC’s Mitali Roy was defeated in Dhupguri by BJP during the 2021 assembly polls. Nirmal now has been given a ticket for parliamentary polls from Jalpaiguri.
Krishna Kalyani, who had won on BJP’s ticket from Raiganj and defected to TMC in 2021, has been given a ticket to fight from the same seat. Biplab Mitra who won the Harirampur seat in the 2021 Assembly polls and has been serving as the state Consumer Affairs minister will be contesting against BJP’s state president Sukanta Majumdar from the Balurghat seat.
The difference among BJP in North Bengal has recently surfaced with sitting MLA from Alipurduar John Barla expressing his displeasure over the saffron party giving a ticket to Manoj Tigga denying him the license to contest for the second time.
