Kolkata, Mar 15 (PTI) With the crucial West Bengal Assembly polls now declared, here is a sneak peek into some of the key constituencies in Kolkata and its adjoining areas that are expected to draw significant political attention.
Bhabanipur: Perhaps the most high-profile Assembly constituency in the state owing to its representation by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, the south Kolkata seat of Bhabanipur has remained a stronghold of TMC since the party came to power in 2011.
The Trinamool supremo won two Assembly bypolls and a full-term poll from this seat which also houses her residence.
After her defeat to BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari in Nandigram by a narrow margin in the 2021 assembly polls, a result she challenged before the Calcutta High Court, Banerjee returned to the Assembly by winning the Bhabanipur bypoll later that year with 71.9 per cent of the votes.
Interestingly, her victory margin of nearly 59,000 votes, has lately become the subject of fervent political chatter owing to significant deletions of voters’ names from the constituency’s electoral rolls during the SIR exercise.
While the EC deleted 47,094 names, 44,786 at the draft stage and 2,324 more in the final list, it referred an additional over 14,000 electors to judicial officers for adjudication on grounds of logical discrepancies in enumeration forms.
Though Banerjee, a vociferous critic of the roll revision exercise, has announced that she would win the seat, even it meant by a single vote, political observers feel the post-SIR rolls may have put Banerjee to the toughest test in her political career ever, should she chose to repeat candidature from what the TMC considered its “safest seat”.
Ballygunge: The south Kolkata assembly constituency Ballygunge offers a curious mix of housing some of the most well-known addresses in the city, marked by residential highrises and tony neighbourhoods on one side, coexisting with middle and upper middle class localities as also wide spread shanty towns on the other.
Urdu-speaking Muslims, Bengali speaking Hindus, non-Bengali Hindus and a sprinkling of Christians in pockets of Mullickbazar and Park Circus make up the approximately 2.75 lakh electorate of the constituency.
Trinamool candidate Babool Supriyo won the 2022 bypol, which constitutes over 50 per cent minority population, necessitated by the demise of TMC minister Subrata Mukherjee.
After having wrested the seat from the CPI(M) in 2006, before which it was a Left stronghold from 1977, the TMC has won the constituency in every subsequent election. With Supriyo now moving to Rajya Sabha on a TMC ticket, eyes remain fixed on who Mamata Banerjee chooses to represent the seat as her party’s candidate.
Kolkata Port: Considered one of the politically significant seats, Kolkata Port, located in the western fringes of the city bordering the Hooghly river, includes densely populated neighbourhoods and a significant presence of minority voters.
The seat is represented by TMC’s Firhad Hakim, who won the constituency in the 2021 edition of the polls by a comfortable margin. Kolkata Port has remained a TMC stronghold, but opposition parties, including the BJP and Congress, have attempted to make inroads.
Given its demographic composition, political visibility, and the prominence of its sitting MLA, the constituency is expected to attract significant attention during poll campaigns.
Bhangar: Technically falling in the South 24 Parganas district, Bhangar was brought under the jurisdiction of Kolkata Police in 2024 for active policing owing to the sensitivity of the region marked by frequent political clashes between the TMC, which won the seat in 2016, and the Indian Secular Front (ISF) which currently holds political sway in the area after snatching the constituency from its rivals in the 2021 state polls.
In fact, ISF’s Nawsad Siddique remains the only non-BJP opposition MLA in the Assembly, with Bhangar standing as a sore spot in TMC’s electoral domination in south Bengal which the party desperately wants to retrieve.
Siddique, who won the Bhangar seat in 2021 with a margin of over 26,000 votes over his nearest TMC rival, is likely to contest from the seat again. A renewed electoral alliance between the ISF and CPI(M), which won the seat seven consecutive times from 1972 to 2001 and again in 2011 and still retains a bank of committed voters, only improves Siddique’s chances of repeating success, experts say.
Bitter factional rivalry within the TMC, allegedly between the party strongman Arabul Islam and the MLA of adjacent Canning Purba Saokat Molla, frequently surfacing in the region poses additional challenges for the party’s victory prospects in the seat.
Baruipur Paschim: Represented by Speaker Biman Banerjee since 2011, Baruipur Paschim seat, part of Jadavpur Lok Sabha segment, has long remained a TMC fortress.
However, recent trends indicate a growing challenge from the BJP and the CPI(M) in the area.
According to electoral data, the constituency has over 2.32 lakh registered voters, with Muslim voters accounting for over 30 per cent of the electorate.
Despite the TMC’s dominance, the opposition has steadily expanded its vote share over the years. The BJP turned out as a significant challenger in recent elections, securing 27.97 per cent of the vote in the 2021 Assembly election, while the CPI(M), once a dominant force in the region, continues to retain pockets of support. PTI SMY SCH AMR SUS MNB
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