Lok Sabha Elections 2024: In Gani Khan’s Malda, a nephew relies on family legacy to hold on to a Congress bastion

Malda, West Bengal: “You don’t have to ask me to vote for you,” Mosharraf Hossain, 85, struggles to raise his shivering hands and murmurs as Isha Khan Choudhury comes to his doorstep and greets him. “I always voted for your uncle and your father,” Hossain tells Choudhury, who smiles and touches the feet of the octogenarian, before resuming his ‘roadshow’ through the alleys of Enayetpur in Maldaha Dakshin Lok Sabha constituency of West Bengal.

Isha Khan is the Congress’s candidate in Maldaha Dakshin. He had two consecutive stints as a member of the state legislative assembly between 2011 and 2021. But, for most of the elders in the constituency, he is still simply the nephew of ‘Barkatda’ and son of ‘Daluda’. He too is relying on the legacy of his uncle and father as he takes on Trinamool Congress’s Shahnawaz Ali Raihan and Bharatiya Janata Party’s Sreerupa Mitra Chaudhury.

‘Barkatda’ or Abu Barkat Ataur Ghani Khan Choudhury was one of the legends of Congress from West Bengal. He was a member of the state legislative assembly for five terms between 1957 and 1972, a minister in the state government from 1972 to 1977, and a member of the Lok Sabha for eight consecutive terms between 1980 and 2004. He was a heavyweight minister in the cabinets of Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi between 1980 and 1987.

But, even 18 years after he died in 2006, ‘Barkatda’ is still revered as the “architect of modern Malda” – in a unanimous acknowledgment of his contribution to the development of the district.

If he made Malda a bastion of the Congress, his younger brother Abu Hasem Khan Choudhury, aka ‘Daluda’ too tried to carry on the legacy. He was also an MLA from 1996 to 2006. He was also elected from Malda and Maldaha Dakshin, a new constituency created in 2009, to the Lok Sabha four times between 2006 and 2019. He was a union minister too in Manmohan Singh’s government.

“The Congress had lost all the assembly seats in Malda in the 2021 state elections because the BJP and the TMC had polarised the voters – one by using the CAA and NRC (Citizenship Amendment Act and National Register of Citizens) and another by pretending to be the saviour of people from such threats,” says Isha Khan. “But people can now see through such tactics and this time around will surely vote for the Congress,” he exudes confidence, making promises like saving villages on the banks of the rivers from erosion, providing government support to silk farmers to reverse the decline in the industry and creating local employment opportunities to stop the migration of workers.

‘Kotwali’ – the palatial residence of the first family of politics in Malda – was breached long back. Abu Nasar Khan Choudhury – another brother of ‘Barkatda’ – was a minister in Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee’s government from 2011 to 2012. He quit the Congress after the grand old party in September 2012 withdrew support from the TMC government. Mausam Noor, a niece of ‘Barkatda’ and ‘Daluda’, was elected to the Lok Sabha from Maldaha Uttar, another new constituency like Maldaha Dakshin, on a Congress ticket in 2009 and 2014. She quit the grand old party to join the TMC in January 2019 and fought but lost the parliamentary polls a few months later. The TMC, however, sent her to the Rajya Sabha in 2020.

Noor sulked for a few days after the TMC did not pick her as its candidate for Maldaha Uttar for this year’s Lok Sabha election. She, however, has now started campaigning for her party’s nominee Prasun Banerjee, a former Indian Police Service officer.

She is also campaigning for Raihan, the TMC’s nominee in Maldaha Dakshin, even criticizing ‘Daluda’, her maternal uncle, and Isha Khan, her cousin and the candidate of the Congress, for not doing enough for the development and welfare of the people, as well as for not strongly speaking up for them in the Lok Sabha and the state assembly respectively.

“People know what my uncle and my father have done for Malda. I have also done my bit,” Isha Khan says, avoiding a war of words with Noor.