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Lok Sabha elections 2019: Political heat rises in northern hill seats of West Bengal
In the 2014 general elections, S S Ahluwalia of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won Darjeeling, Md Salim of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) won Raiganj, while Bijoy Chandra Bauman of Trinamool Congress (TMC) won Jalpaiguri.
Of the three West Bengal constituencies going to the polls in the second phase on Thursday, the battle for Darjeeling, in north Bengal, is the most politically significant. The other two seats are Jalpaiguri, also in north Bengal, and Raiganj in Uttar Dinajpur.
In the 2014 general elections, S S Ahluwalia of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won Darjeeling, Md Salim of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) won Raiganj, while Bijoy Chandra Bauman of Trinamool Congress (TMC) won Jalpaiguri.
This time, four hill-based parties — Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) led by Bimal Gurung, Gorkha National Liberation Front, Communist Party of Revolutionary Marxists and a faction of Akhil Bharat Gorkha League — have rallied around the BJP candidate Raju Singh Bista, who will take on TMC’s Amar Singh Rai in Darjeeling.
These parties are trying to revive the demand for “political and administrative separation” from Bengal, which chief minister Mamata Banerjee has vowed to prevent.
Raiganj is one of Bengal’s trickiest constituencies, where analysts claim, anyone with 30% of the vote can hope to win. Deepa Dasmunsi, the Congress candidate whom CPI(M)’s Md Salim edged out in 2014, is back to avenge her defeat. The BJP – its candidate is Debasree Chaudhuri — has tried to polarise voters by highlighting the deaths of two young men in police firing in front of Daribhit School in Islampur in September 2018 while protesting the appointment of an Urdu teacher. From the TMC, Kanaia Lal Agarwal is in the fray.
In Jalpaiguri, the fight is mainly between TMC’s Bijoy Chandra Barman and BJP’s Jayanta Ray. Interestingly, both parties are claiming credit for the circuit bench of the Calcutta high court that was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in February.
“If polling is peaceful and fair, it will be difficult for Trinamool Congress to win any of the three seats. It will also be a challenge for the ruling party to keep its workers in check so that they don’t indulge in violence,” said Amal Mukhopadhyay, a teacher of political science and former principal of Presidency College.
