Kolkata, Mar 18 (PTI) Senior BJP leader Dilip Ghosh on Wednesday kick-started his assembly poll campaign in Kharagpur Sadar constituency in West Bengal’s Paschim Medinipur district with a motorcycle rally and asserted that he will win by a margin higher than the 2016 elections, when he was first elected from the seat.
Ghosh, who had been the state BJP president and Medinipur MP, said he would secure more than 1 lakh votes from Kharagpur Sadar.
“I will win by a higher margin this time,” he said.
The former state BJP president, under whose stewardship the party rose to 77 seats in the 2021 assembly elections from just three in the 2016 polls, of whom he was one of the winners, gave up his MLA-ship in 2019 after winning the Lok Sabha elections.
“The general public here thinks that the BJP is their own party and that is why they make us victorious in every election,” he said.
Ghosh, who expressed happiness after being returned to Kharagpur Sadar by the BJP leadership, exuded his usual confidence as he started his campaign riding a motorcycle at the head of a two-wheeler rally of the BJP in the railway town of Kharagpur.
Ghosh had secured a little over 61,000 votes in 2016 from Kharagpur Sadar, defeating 10-term MLA Gyan Singh Sohanpal of the Congress, who had bagged around 55,000 votes.
The seat, which was bagged by the TMC in a 2019 by-election after Ghosh was elected to the Lok Sabha, was wrested by the BJP’s actor-politician candidate Hiran Chatterjee in 2021.
Ghosh lost the 2024 Lok Sabha elections after being shifted to Bardhaman-Durgapur constituency from his winning seat Medinipur. PTI AMR ACD
This report is auto-generated from PTI news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.