West Bengal Assembly Elections 2026 | Poll violence concerns dominate voters' psyche at Bengal's Dinhata, Sitalkuchi assembly seats

Cooch Behar: An eerie unease shrouds residents of the Dinhata and Sitalkuchi constituencies in north Bengal’s Cooch Behar district, even as the two assembly segments approach the April 23 D-day when voters will queue up before polling stations to exercise their franchise.

Considered among the hotbeds of political violence in West Bengal, voters keep fingers crossed as few can foresee minor skirmishes between TMC and BJP workers snowballing into full-fledged street fights with bombs and bullets, spilling blood and wreaking havoc on law and order.

The Dinhata segment’s incumbent MLA, TMC’s Udayan Guha, who also doubles up as the North Bengal Development minister, has so far focused on his party’s development agenda during campaigns, avoiding provocative statements at the opposition he is otherwise known for, observers say.

“That’s perhaps because Guha knows this time he is taking on BJP’s Ajay Roy, a political greenhorn, instead of his arch rival in the saffron camp, Nisith Pramanik, carrying a sense that his victory chances have improved," said Prabir Kundu, a journalist on the ground.

Son of Forward Bloc patriarch and six-time legislator Kamal Guha, Udayan is himself a three-term sitting MLA since 2011, the first of which he won as a Left leader and the remaining two as a TMC politico.

In 2021, Guha lost to Pramanik by a margin of just 57 votes. He stormed back in a by-poll, winning the seat with a margin of over 1.6 lakh votes and 84 per cent vote share after Pramanik vacated it to become a union minister.

During the 2021 post-poll violence across Bengal, Guha was attacked by miscreants in Dinhata and suffered a hand fracture. He blamed the BJP for it.

In the 2023 panchayat polls, one person was killed, and four others were injured in a firing during a clash between two groups.

In March 2025, a group of suspected TMC supporters attacked the car of Nikhil Ranjan Dey, the BJP MLA of Cooch Behar Dakshin, while he was leaving the court premises in Dinhata. He was named in an old case of political violence.

Three days later, several people were injured in a clash between TMC and BJP workers in the same area.

In August 2025, several BJP workers were injured after their homes were vandalised by miscreants in Dinhata's Salmara area. During the attack, the assailants allegedly kicked an 8-month pregnant woman, leaving her injured.

It is in this volatile landscape that fresh discontent simmers over SIR, in which an estimated 26,000 names have either been struck off electoral rolls or kept under adjudication.

Among the affected are residents of the 51 former Bangladeshi enclaves, the majority of which fall under the Dinhata seat, who were absorbed as Indian citizens in 2015 during the historic exchange of enclaves with the neighbouring nation.

“Despite the Election Commission’s assurances, about 80 per cent of us, some 8,000 people in total, remain under adjudication with barely weeks remaining before the polls. It’s a cruel irony that our citizenship has again been questioned after the central government recognised us as the newest citizens of India,” said Jaynal Abedin, a resident of Madhya Mashaldanga, a former enclave.

“Our repeated appeals before the EC and the district administration have fallen on deaf ears. We are planning to move court after waiting for a few more days to see if we are included in supplementary rolls,” added Saddam Hossain of Powaturkuthi, another former enclave.

BJP leader Diptiman Sengupta, who led the movement to protect the rights of enclave dwellers before their exchange, said he would rather stand with the SIR-affected dwellers than support the exercise.

“It was my enclave movement leadership that paved the way towards the party. That was my base. My bond with them will always be stronger than my duties towards the party,” he said.

The rough political neighbourhood of Dinhata found unwarranted reflection during the 2021 state polls in adjacent Sitalkuchi, where poll-day violence left five people dead, putting the otherwise obscure assembly seat under the national spotlight.

Four youths were killed during polling after CISF jawans opened fire at a school in Sitalkuchi’s Jorpatki village. The forces claimed that they were forced to open fire in self-defence while trying to protect the polling booth, voters, and polling staff, after they came under attack from a group of villagers.

In a separate incident on the same day, a BJP supporter and a first-time voter was shot dead by two motorcycle-borne armed men outside a polling booth in another village.

In 2021, BJP’s Baren Chandra Burman defeated TMC’s Partha Pratim Ray by nearly 18,000 votes, wresting Sitalkuchi from the state’s ruling party, which it had held since 2011.

In a twist of political chess play, the TMC fielded Harihar Das, known to be a close associate of BJP Rajya Sabha MP Ananta Maharaj, from the seat this time, making his candidature a politically significant choice with the potential to reshape local dynamics.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee last month conferred Ananta Maharaj, once a staunch advocate for a separate Greater Cooch Behar state or a Union Territory, with Bengal's highest Banga Vibhushan award for his “efforts towards the socio-economic development of the Rajbanshi community”.

The BJP has also replaced its sitting MLA with Savitri Barman, a fresher and party district Mahila Morcha leader, as its candidate.