West Bengal Assembly Elections 2026 | Parched, poverty-stricken Purulia cries for water and industry

Joypur (Purulia): Outside Begunkodor railway station, Basudeb Gorai, owner of Ma Durga Line Hotel is cut up with 15 years of Trinamool rule.

A commerce graduate from a south Kolkata college, Gorai could not find a school teacher’s job, worked with a salary of Rs 2,000 per month in a local school and ended up running the roadside joint. Because of Begunkodor’s fame as a haunted site he gets some customers but the income is irregular and nowhere close to what he thought he would earn while pursuing his degree.

“For the last 15 years, the TMC government did nothing to give us jobs. What’s wrong in trying BJP once. It can’t be worse than the current situation,” he said.

Gorai is not alone. Across nine assembly constituencies in Purulia – economically most backward district in West Bengal – public sentiments are similar.

The TMC government’s failure in providing essential services like water in a parched district, large scale corruption and lack of livelihood options come under attack in every debate. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the latest to jump on to the band wagaon.

“Mamata Banerjee sold you the dream of Raghunathpur industrial zone. But in the TMC raj, no work gets done without a cut. When a cut is demanded, where will the industry come from? That's why the industry is suffering here. Factories don't come out of fear. Factories come with trust; factories run on trust. Investment comes with trust,” Modi said in a rally at Purulia town.

For years, Raghunathpur industrial zone – projected by the West Bengal government as the centrepiece for Purulia’s economic development - remains severely under occupied.

It was at the heart of Mamata Banerjee’s Jangal Sundari Karmanagari project that sought to attract an investment of around Rs 70,000 crore and produce 1,5 lakh jobs. The reality, however, is different with only two functional industries, one of them being a central government power unit.

Purulia is currently classified as Bengal’s most backward district, according to the National Multidimensional Poverty Index. The western most district consistently ranks at the bottom across several critical poverty and deprivation metrics.

“Forget the industry, we don’t even get water in our houses. Farmers rely on monsoon to have one paddy crop in a year. In a bad monsoon year, they have a problem,” said Samir Mukherjee, a local who retired from CPWD.

For years, there have been plans to bring water to Purulia from Panchet (Damodar river) and Mukutmanipur (Kangsabati), but people are yet to get the benefits.

People in Purulia still await any benefits of a long-awaited project to bring water from Panchet Dam to the parched district

Of nine assembly constituencies in Purulia district, TMC won seven in 2016 while Congress bagged two. Five years later, Congress went out of the picture with BJP bagging six seats in 2021 and TMC grabbed the rest.

This time, BJP hopes to consolidate further because of the support from Adivasi Kurmi Samaj that controls nearly 30% votes in almost all the segments. A dominant caste group across the state, the Kurmi’s demand for Scheduled Tribe status received backing from state BJP leaders like Shuvendu Adhikari. Congress too is hopeful of regaining people’s trust in a few constituencies, putting TMC further on the back foot.