In the midst of anti-incumbency and pro-BJP opinion poll projections in West Bengal, Trinamool Congress can expect a comfortable victory in the Jangipur Lok Sabha constituency in Murshidabad district.
Jangipur, which will go to polls in the third phase, has elected the Late President Pranab Mukherjee twice from the seat in 2004 and 2009.
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Going by the trend about how the ruling party turned Jangipur into its virtual fortress since the 2019 elections, it can be safely said that only a miracle can change the trend this time.
In 2019, Trinamool Congress candidate Khalilur Rahman, who has been re-nominated by the party, was elected by a massive margin of 2,45,782 votes.
The ruling party maintained its absolute supremacy in the 2021 West Bengal assembly polls as well. In 2021, the Trinamool Congress won all seven assembly constituencies under the Jangipur constituency. The strong wave of BJP throughout West Bengal in 2021 was not felt anywhere in the entire Jangipur.
The ruling party received a minor jolt in the 2023 by-elections for the Sagardighi assembly constituency, one of the seven under Jangipur Lok Sabha, when the Left Front-supported Congress candidate Bayron Biswas bagged a surprise victory.
However, the festivity in the Congress-Left Front combined camp did not last long as Biswas joined Trinamool Congress just a month after getting elected as the Congress candidate.
In the 2019 elections, Trinamool Congress, BJP, Congress and CPI(M) had all fielded their candidates. However, this time Left Front-backed Congress candidate Mortaza Hossain and BJP’s Dhananjay Ghosh are contesting against Trinamool’s Khalilur Rahman.
Also, in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, Rahman got 43.14 per cent of the vote share while BJP’s Mafuza Khatun came second with 24.3 per cent vote share, followed by Congress’s Abhijit Mukherjee at 19.61 per cent and CPI(M)’s Zulfiqar Ali with 7.32 per cent.
However, some voters, who are anti-TMC and anti-BJP, may vote in favour of Congress Mortaza Hossain in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.
Despite the landslide victory of Trinamool Congress in 2019, a clear consolidation of Hindu voters in favour of BJP was evident which aided the party candidate Mafuza Khatun to finish second with 24.3 per cent vote share.
BJP’s Dhananjay Ghosh, a greenhorn in electoral politics, is also depending on further consolidation of the Hindu votes to work in his favour.
With over 16 lakh voters, the Jangipur constituency has earned a negative tag for recording maximum cases of poll-related violence, especially during the panchayat elections which are not monitored by the Election Commission of India.
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