Five of West Bengal’s 42 Lok Sabha seats will go to the polls in the third phase of the ongoing national polls on Tuesday.
Congress won three of the five seats – Malda North, Malda South, Jangipur – in Malda and Murshidabad districts in 2014. The ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) has never won any of the four Lok Sabha seats in the two districts, which have traditionally been the Congress’s strongholds.
Over eight million voters are eligible to vote while 61 candidates are in the fray.
Mausam Benazir Noor, the two-time Congress lawmaker from Malda North, has switched to the TMC. Her uncle, late Congress leader A B A Ghani Khan Choudhury, was an eight-time Parliament member. Noor is up against her cousin and Congress candidate, Isha Khan Choudhury.
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In 2009, Noor got 47.77% of the votes and won by a margin of over 60,000 votes. In 2014, she secured 33.41% of the votes and won with a margin of over 65,000 votes.
In Malda South, Congress lawmaker, Abu Hasem Khan Choudhury, is likely to have it easier as the Left Front is not contesting this seat.
In Jangipur, Congress candidate Abhijit Mukherjee is seeking re-election. He first became a Parliament member in 2012, when his father, Pranab Mukherjee, vacated the seat to take over as the President of India. Abhijit Mukherjee retained the seat in 2014 and won by only 8,161 votes.
Of the five seats, the TMC won Balurghat in 2014. The BJP is expected to give a tough fight to TMC’s Arpita Ghosh, who is hoping to retain the seat.
The BJP has been trying to make inroads into states like West Bengal to make up for the possible losses of seats in its strongholds like Uttar Pradesh, where it peaked in 2014 with 71 out of 80 seats. West Bengal has the most seats after Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra (48).
{{/usCountry}}The BJP has been trying to make inroads into states like West Bengal to make up for the possible losses of seats in its strongholds like Uttar Pradesh, where it peaked in 2014 with 71 out of 80 seats. West Bengal has the most seats after Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra (48).
{{/usCountry}}The Communist Party of India (Marxist) is hoping to retain the Murshidabad seat, which it won in 2014 by a margin of 18,453 votes.
Muslim voters play a decisive role in four of the five seats. According to the 2011 census, Muslims account for 66.26% of the population in Murshidabad and 51.27% in Malda.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah have campaigned in West Bengal and focussed on issues such as infiltration from Bangladesh and implementation of National Register of Citizens (NRC) in West Bengal.
Around four million people were left out of a final draft of NRC in Assam in July. The exercise was undertaken in the state to identify and deport illegal Bangladeshi immigrants.
Columnist and political commentator, Suvashis Maitra, said it will be an extremely close contest between the Congress, TMC and BJP in Murshidabad and Jangipur. “For TMC, retaining Balurghat will not be easy because the BJP has risen sharply. In Malda South, Congress is in a good position, but the BJP is likely to increase its vote share. In Malda North, where voters are still loyal to late A B A Ghani Khan Choudhury, Mausam Noor will face a tough challenge.”