SIR deletions, communal undercurrents shape poll battle in Murshidabad's violence-hit seats

Kolkata: In West Bengal's Murshidabad, a district where Muslims constitute roughly two-thirds of the population, communal undercurrents and deletion of names from the electoral rolls under the SIR are seen as major factors that would decide the fate of the Assembly poll candidates.

After the electoral rolls were published on February 28, post-Special Intensive Revision (SIR), over 11 lakh voters were kept under adjudication in Murshidabad. This was around 20 per cent of the 55 lakh voters in the district.

Political analysts believe that even though the SIR deletions might put the Trinamool Congress in a tight spot, voters who passed the filter are likely to rally behind the incumbent party against the BJP.

Apart from this, the recurring communal violence in the district since 2025 has dominated the political discourse, and that might be a clincher.

On April 12, 2025, a mob broke down the main door of 72-year-old Harogobinda Das's house in Samsergunj, dragged him and his son Chandan (42) out, struck them with axes and stood guard till they bled to death.

What began as protests against the Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025, earlier that week, quickly turned violent in Jangipur, Samserganj, Dhulian and Suti areas. Protestors blocked national highways and torched police vehicles.

Houses were set ablaze, while reports of the mob cutting off the water supply to prevent fires from being extinguished also poured in.

It took the Calcutta High Court's intervention, ordering the deployment of armed central forces, the state issuing prohibitory orders, and the temporary suspension of internet to stem the violence.

Nearly 60 FIRs were lodged, and about 300 people were arrested. Hundreds of victims fled their homes and crossed the Bhagirathi river to take shelter in the adjacent Malda district.

Even almost a year after the incident, the wound festers. The Trinamool Congress won the Samsergunj, Suti and Jangipur seats in the 2021 polls with comfortable margins.

The hydra heads of communal tumult popped up again on March 27 in Jangipur's Raghunathgunj area when a Ram Navami rally turned violent.

A mob ransacked shops, fruit stalls and food outlets owned by Muslims and set several of those establishments ablaze.

TMC's two-term MLA from Jangipur, Jakir Hossain, who is seeking reelection, saw the unrest as the BJP's design.

"The BJP is trying to consolidate Hindu votes by creating communal tension in the region. They don't realise how far-reaching the consequences can be.

"It is engineering these incidents in the run-up to the elections to iron out the party's internal factionalism in the region," Hossain alleged.

He had swept the 2021 polls, garnering 53.65 per cent of the votes. The BJP was a distant second with 22.17 per cent vote share.

The saffron party has fielded advocate Chitto Mukherjee, a political greenhorn, from the Jangipur seat this time, posing him as Hossain's primary opponent.

In Samsergunj, the TMC has fielded Nur Alam, a local entrepreneur, who recently joined the party.

The jury is out on whether the ruling party's decision to replace Samsergunj's sitting MLA for 10 years, Amirul Islam, had anything to do with the violence in the region a year ago, or whether anti-incumbency forced it to field him from the adjacent Farakka seat.

Interestingly, Alam's name featured in the poll panel's "under adjudication" list following the electoral roll clean-up exercise, a common scenario for several candidates in the 2026 election cycle.

"I have been receiving great responses from people during my door-to-door campaigns. I am focusing on Mamata Banerjee’s welfare schemes and telling people that I will leave no stone unturned to ensure that the benefits reach the marginalised sections," he said.

Alam's rival from the saffron camp, Sasthi Charan Ghosh, a Jan Sangh old-timer who worked as a BJP senior functionary in Murshidabad with a base in Samsergunj's nerve centre, Dhulian, isn't new to the state's electoral politics. However, he is yet to taste victory.

"My campaigns are focused on the TMC's graft. My electoral capital is people's disgust towards the TMC. A lack of drainage facility, dilapidated healthcare and road network, Ganga river erosion and unemployment are among the long-standing issues. I am offering them BJP’s alternative development model," Ghosh said.

In the Suti seat, the TMC has reposed its faith in incumbent MLA Emani Biswas. He will contest against BJP's Mahabir Ghosh, a new face in the party's electoral politics.

In 2021, Biswas wrested the Suti seat from the Congress, bagging nearly 59 per cent vote share. His BJP rival was a distant second, polling half the votes Biswas got.

But those margins are of little comfort for the TMC this time, courtesy of the massive voter roll purge in Murshidabad.

Among the assembly seats in the district, Samsergunj, with 1.2 lakh cases and Suti, with 1.1 lakh cases, led the adjudication list.

"The massive SIR deletions are likely to put the TMC in a tight spot in these three seats. Even if we agree to the assessment that Muslims have rallied behind the TMC against the BJP, the results this time will be a close call," said Maidul Islam, a professor of Political Science at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata.

"But that's just an arithmetic point of view. From the perspective of political chemistry, one can safely assume the TMC will benefit from the consolidated support of those voters who passed the SIR filter. I don't think they will vote for any other non-BJP party in the region," he added.