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TMC announces candidates for all 42 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal
The most surprising candidate in the TMC list is Indian cricketer Yusuf Pathan who has been fielded from Berhampore in Murshidabad district against incumbent Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury of the Congress
The Trinamool Congress (TMC) on Sunday announced the candidate list for all 42 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal. There were several surprise elements in the candidate list which was read out by TMC national secretary Abhishek Banerjee as the party supremo and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee walked on the 300-ft-long ramp built on the rally ground with the nominees, something no state possibly witnessed in the past.
The most surprising candidate was Indian cricketer Yusuf Pathan who has been fielded from Berhampore in Murshidabad district against incumbent Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, state Congress president and a critic of Mamata Banerjee who was not in favour of an alliance with the TMC as part of the INDIA coalition.
Murshidabad has Bengal’s highest Muslim population of 66.28 %, according to the 2011 census. Chowdhury has been winning the Berhampore seat since 1999 but his margin of victory dropped over the years.
The second surprise candidate was actor Rachana Banerjee who has been fielded against Locket Chatterjee, also a former actor and incumbent BJP MP from the Hooghly seat in Hooghly district.
That Rachana Banerjee might get a seat became a subject of discussion in political circles a week ago when the chief minister appeared on Didi No 1, a popular television reality show the actor has been hosting for almost a decade.
Although Mamata Banerjee fielded movie star Dipak Adhikari, popularly known as Dev from Ghatal (covering East and West Midnapore districts), she did not renominate two popular movie stars and incumbent MPs - Nusrat Jahan from North 24 Parganas district’s Basirhat (of which Sandeshkhali is a part) and Mimi Chakraborty from Jadavpur, which covers part of Kolkata and in South 24 Parganas.
Prasun Banerjee, an Indian Police Service (IPS) officer who resigned earlier this week, is another surprise candidate. He has been fielded from the Malda North seat that BJP wrested in 2019.
Former Indian cricketer Kirti Azad, who left the BJP and joined the TMC a few years ago, has been fielded from the Burdwan-Durgapur seat in West Burdwan district that the BJP’s S S Ahluwalia won in 2019.
During a short 15-minuute speech at the rally, the chief minister said: “We will contest all 42 seats in West Bengal against the BJP, Left and the Congress. We will contest one seat in Uttar Pradesh in tie up with the Samajwadi Party (SP). I had a word with Akhilesh (Yadav). We are an opposition party in Meghalaya. We will contest there, and in Assam as well.”
Here’s the list of TMC candidates:
Cooch Behar – Jagdish Chandra Basunia
Alipurduar – Prakash Chik Baraik (Rajya Sabha member)
Jalpaiguri – Nirmal Chandra Rai (MLA)
Darjeeling – Gopal Lama
Raiganj – Krishna Kalyani
Balurghat – Biplab Mitra (minister)
Malda North – Prasun Banerjee (former IPS officer)
Malda South – Shanawaz Ali Rehan
Jangipur – Khalilur Rehman
Berhampore – Yusuf Pathan (Indian cricketer)
Murshidabad – Abu Taher Khan
Krishnanagar - Mahua Moitra
Ranaghat – Mukut Mani Adhikari (BJP MLA)
Bangaon _ Biswajit das
Barrackpore – Partha Bhowmick (minister)
Dum Dum – Saugata Roy (MP)
Barasat - Kakali Ghosh Dastidar (MP)
Basirhat – Haji Nurul Islam
Joynagar – Pratima Mondal
Mathurapur – Bapi Haldar
Diamond Harbour – Abhishek Banerjee
Jadavpur- Saayoni Ghosh (youth TMC president)
Kolkata South – Mala Roy (MP)
Kolkata North – Sudip Bandopadhyay (MP)
Howrah- Prasun Banerjee (MP)
Uluberia- Sajda Ahmed
Srirampur – Kalyan Banerjee (MP)
Hooghly- Rachana Banerjee (film star)
Arambagh- Mitali Bagh
Tamluk – Debangshu Bhattacharya
Kanthi – Uttam Barik
Ghatal – Dipak Adhikari (MP)
Jhargram – Kalipada Soren
Midnapore – June Maliah (MLA)
Purulia – Shantiram Mahato
Bankura – Arup Chakraborty (MLA)
Bishnupur – Sujata Mondal Khan (incumbent BJP MP’s ex-wife)
Burdwan – Dr Sharmila Sarkar
Burdwan-Durgapur- Kirti Azad (ex- cricketer)
Asansol – Shatrughan Sinha (MP)
Bolur – Asit Mal (MP)
Birbhum – Shatabdi Roy (MP)
