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TMC fields Matua MP’s daughter for Bagdah bypoll
The BJP, which enjoys the support of a large section of the Matua community, won Bagdah, Raiganj and Ranaghat South in 2021
Kolkata: The Trinamool Congress (TMC) on Friday, while announcing by-poll candidates, fielded Madhuparna Thakur, daughter of TMC Rajya Sabha member Mamata Bala Thakur, from North 24 Parganas district’s Bagdah assembly segment.
Madhupuran is a young member from the family of the Matua community’s founder Sri Harichand Thakur (1812-1878). The Dalit Matua community has a sizable presence at Bagdah and Ranaghat South assembly seats which will go to by-polls on July 10, alongside Raiganj and Manicktala in West Bengal.
Bagdah is part of the Bongaon Lok Sabha constituency which was won by Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Shantanu Thakur for the second time in the recent polls. In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, Shantanu wrested the Bongaon seat from Madhuparna’s mother.
“My sole mission will be to ensure the welfare of the Matua community,” Madhuparna, who is a fresher in politics, said after her name was announced. The contest will be tough for the young candidate since the BJP was ahead of the TMC in the Bagdah segment in the recent Lok Sabha polls, leaders of the ruling party said.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which secured 75 of Bengal’s 294 assembly seats in 2021, is yet to name its candidates for the by-polls.
The BJP, which enjoys the support of a large section of the Matua community, won Bagdah, Raiganj and Ranaghat South in 2021 but the winners later joined the TMC.
The turncoat legislators – Krishna Kalyani from Raiganj, Mukutmani Adhikari from Ranaghat South and Biswajit Das from Bagdah – resigned from the legislative assembly before the recent Lok Sabha elections to contest the Raiganj, Ranaghat and Bongaon seats, respectively but lost to the BJP candidates.
Although the BJP’s 2019 Lok Sabha tally of 18, a record, came down to 12, it won these three seats twice in a row.
The TMC did not field Biswajit Das but Kalyani and Mukutmani Adhikari were nominated again from Raiganj and Ranaghat South, respectively. The BJP was ahead of TMC in both these assembly segments in the recent polls.
“There was some lack of coordination between grassroots-level workers and leaders. We will overcome this and perform well,” said Adhikari, whose main challenge will be to secure the support of Matua voters.
“Lok Sabha and assembly polls are not contested on the same issues. With people’s blessings, TMC will do well in the by-election,” Kalyani told reporters.
Matuas are a part of the large Dalit Namasudra community that migrated from East Pakistan during Partition and the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War to escape religious persecution. The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which was enforced in March, was promised to them by the BJP in 2019.
The division in the Thakur family got wider on the eve of the recent Lok Sabha polls when Shantanu Thakur made Mamata Bala Thakur, his aunt, vacate a portion of the family’s ancestral property at Thakurnagar, the headquarters of the All India Matua Mahasangha.
Protesting the incident, Mamata Bala Thakur and her daughter held a sit-in demonstration at Thakurnagar for around a week.
The fourth poll-bound assembly seat, Manicktala in Kolkata, is vacant amid the death of TMC’s veteran legislator and minister Sadhan Pandey. In the Lok Sabha polls, TMC was ahead of BJP in this assembly segment, which is part of the Kolkata North seat that the ruling party’s Sudip Bandopadhyay retained for the fourth time.
Although election records in India show that most by-polls are won by the state’s ruling party, TMC chairperson and chief minister Mamata Banerjee started her preparations on Tuesday by calling a meeting of leaders from the Kolkata North Lok Sabha segment. Supti Pandey, the wife of the deceased legislator from Manicktala, was nominated from the seat on Friday.
