Lok Sabha Elections 2024: 'Robinhood of Baharampur' confident even as Mamata Banerjeee mounts a formidable challenge

Baharampur: “I grew up among you. How can I talk about politics here?” Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury says as he starts addressing a crowd that waited for him patiently for more than two hours at Gorabazar Nimtala in Baharampur. He pauses for a while to let the cheers subside and then points at a corner of the crossing and says: “We used to spend time at a tea stall there.”

The audience bursts into laughter as the 68-year-old president of the West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee narrates how he and his friends used to take advantage of the naivety of the owner of a local eatery to have snacks in the evening without paying fully.

Baharampur has been "Janam Bhoomi" and "Karam Bhoomi" for Chowdhury, who has been elected to the Lok Sabha from the constituency five times in a row since 1999. But, he now faces a tough challenge in his bid for a sixth term because West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, his bête noire in the state politics for years, has brought in cricket legend Yusuf Pathan from Gujarat to contest against him.

This is the first time in the past 25 years that Chowdhury has a Muslim as his main rival in the elections. The Muslims account for over 50% of the electorate in the constituency and the TMC hopes that its candidate will take away a significant chunk of the vote bank that the “Robinhood of Baharampur” has been relying on.

Baharampur is not an exception to the story of the sagging fortune of the Congress in West Bengal. Chowdhury had won in 2019, but his vote share dropped by over 5.07% to 45.47%, while his long-time lieutenant Apurba Sarkar a.k.a. David, who quit the Congress to join the TMC in 2018, secured 39.26% votes, thus registering a 19.61% rise in the vote share of Mamata Banerjee’s party. The TMC also won six of the seven Assembly segments of the parliamentary constituency in 2021, while the BJP won one.

Chowdhury, himself, is unperturbed though. “I will quit politics and start selling nuts if I lose to Mamata Banerjee.”

There are reasons for his confidence. “His party hardly has any presence in Baharampur, but Adhir Babu is a big shot and commands respect from all. He has his own support base across the constituency,” says Shariful Islam, a grocer in Rejinagar.

Chowdhury alleges that Banerjee is so desperate to beat him that they have asked the TMC workers in certain Hindu-majority areas of the constituency to campaign for the BJP candidate Nirmal Kumar Saha. 

Banerjee and her political heir apparent Abhishek Banerjee have been blaming Chowdhury for the failure of the negotiations between the TMC and the Congress for an electoral understanding. 

Chowdhury, on the other hand, accuses Banerjee of quitting and sabotaging the I.N.D.I.A bloc at the behest of the BJP in order to save Abhishek from the probes by the central agencies. 

“This is my family. I don’t have to ask for votes from them,” he tells DH, as he concludes his speech, targeting both the BJP for its “divisive politics” and the TMC for its “misrule and rampant corruption in West Bengal”, but without appealing once to cast their votes for him.