Kolkata, April 16 (IANS): Bolpur Lok Sabha constituency in Birbhum District of West Bengal is all set to witness an interesting three-cornered contest this time in the absence of Trinamool Congress strongman Anubrata Mondal.
The Trinamool’s former District President, Mondal, who has a residence in Bolpur, used to control his party’s well-structured organisational machinery in the constituency while sitting at his party office during elections.
However, this time he is in Tihar jail in New Delhi because of his alleged involvement in the cattle smuggling case in West Bengal.
His absence will present a great challenge to the ruling party on polling day.
Bolpur, which elected former Lok Sabha Speaker, late Somnath Chatterjee, as its MP for seven-consecutive terms from 1985 to 2009, is going for polls in the fourth phase on May 13.
The Trinamool Congress has re-nominated its sitting MP from Bolpur, Asit Kumar Mal, who got elected by a margin of over 1,00,000 votes in 2019.
There are two factors that keep Mal confident of his victory this time. The first factor is his comfortable winning margin in 2019. The second factor is that in the 2021 Assembly elections Trinamool Congress candidates got elected from all the seven Assembly constituencies under Bolpur Lok Sabha.
However, political observers say those spectacular results were when Mondal was in full-control of the organisational steering at Bolpur, which is not the case this time.
In such a situation, the BJP candidate Priya Saha, is expecting to use Mondal’s absence as an opportunity to make the lotus bloom at Bolpur for the first time.
In fact, the improvement in the BJP’s vote share at Bolpur in 2019 from what it was in 2014 is giving her extra confidence.
In 2014, the BJP’s Kamini Mohan Sarkar finished a distant third, bagging just 8.64 per cent of the total votes polled. However in 2019, the BJP candidate Ram Prasad Das came in the second position after improving the vote share to 25.44 per cent.
In her own words, “Everyone is aware of what state Mondal is in now. I am confident that the voters of Bolpur will cast their mandates without any fear this time.”
Also in the poll fray is the CPI(M)’s organisational veteran from Birbhum District, Shyamali Pradhan.
She got vast experience in managing panchayat affairs in the district during the erstwhile Left Front regime when Bolpur was virtually a Red bastion.
From 1971 to 2009, Bolpur gave CPI(M) candidates 12-consecutive victories.
Even in the midst of the massive Trinamool Congress wave in 2009, the CPI(M) candidate, Dr Ramchandra Dome got elected from that constituency by a margin of nearly 1,00.000 votes.
However, the equation changed in the 2015 Lok Sabha polls when Trinamool Congress candidate Anupam Hazra got elected. The latter joined the BJP before the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and Trinamool Congress nominated the sitting MP Asit Kumar Mal from that constituency then. Mal has been re-nominated this time as well.
Bolpur is globally famous for the presence of the iconic Visva Bharati University founded by Gurudev Rabindra Nath Tagore, as well as for its associations with legendary personalities like Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen and iconic actor late Balraj Sahni, who had been a teacher of both English and Hindi at the university.
Bolpur has a rich tradition of Baul singers, many of whom are globally acclaimed.