CPI(M) seeks to hold on to its last bastion in Jadavpur Assembly seat

The voters of the Jadavpur Assembly constituency in the southern suburbs of Kolkata on April 10 will decide the fate of not only the candidates in fray, but also of the CPI(M)’s struggle to regain political relevance by retaining its last bastion in West Bengal.

Once called the ‘Leningrad of Kolkata’, Jadavpur has traditionally supported the CPI(M). Jadavpur will go to polls in the fourth phase of the Assembly elections.

The largest Left Front party won the seat from 1967 to 2006. However, things started to change in the 2011 Assembly elections when the Trinamool Congress (TMC) stormed to power in Bengal. The CPI(M) failed to hold fort as the then Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee lost to TMC’s Manish Gupta, which marked the beginning of the Left’s decline in Bengal.

The CPI(M) was able to wrest the seat from the TMC in the 2016 Assembly elections when its candidate Sujan Chakraborty defeated Gupta from Jadavpur. Chakraborty’s victory with a margin of 14,942 votes ensured that the CPI(M) was able to hold on to its only seat under the jurisdiction of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC).

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However, considering the results of the last Lok Sabha elections, the CPI(M) this time will start on the back foot. Its candidate Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya was pushed to the third spot behind the TMC’s Mimi Chakraborty and BJP’s Anupam Hazra from the Jadavpur Lok Sabha seat. The TMC won the Parliamentary seat with a margin of 2,95,239 votes and got a lead of 31,974 votes in the Jadavpur Assembly seat.

This time with the rise of the BJP in Bengal, the constituency will witness a three-corner battle. The TMC, which won the seat only once in 2011, have fielded KMC councilor Debabrata Majumdar, popularly known as Malay in Jadavpur.

A chartered accountant by profession, Majumdar is confident that his work as a councilor in the area and the “poor performance” of Chakraborty in the last five years will ensure his victory.

“One has to remember that despite losing the seat in 2016, we got a lead in 2019 in Jadavpur because of Chakrabirty’s poor performance. This time the voters of Jadavpur will support the TMC,” said Majumdar.

However, Chakraborty brushed aside TMC’s allegations and said “ I am not bothered about what the TMC is saying. The fact is that I was with the people of Jadavpur and worked for them.”

The BJP candidate Rinku Naskar, a KMC councilor and CPI(M) turncoat, said that “ the people of the State are unhappy with TMC over unemployment and lack of industrialization which are upheld by the BJP in its campaign. I am confident of victory.”

BJP with its campaign over the CAA is trying to woo the large refugee population in Jadavpur who arrived from the erstwhile East Pakistan after Partisan.

“Chakraborty stood by the people during the pandemic. CPI(M)’s Sramajibi Canteen for the poor was a commendable effort,” said Tamal Dasgupta. However, a section of locals are praising the TMC for the welfare schemes of the State Government.