Baharampur seat in Bengal: Mamata hasn’t yet succeeded in breaching this Congress fortress

Kolkata, March 29: The schedule for the 17th Lok Sabha election was announced by the Election Commission on Sunday, March 10. The election will be held in seven phases between April 11 and May 19 with the results to be declared on May 23. Of all the states in the country, West Bengal, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh will witness elections in seven phases.

Here we take a look at all the Lok Sabha constituencies (42) of Bengal and how parties have fared there over the years.

Constituency: BAHARAMPUR

Date of election: April 29 (Phase 4)

The Baharampur Lok Sabha constituency in Murshidabad district of Bengal comprises the following seven segments: Burwan (SC); Kandi; Bharatpur; Rejinagar; Beldanga; Baharampur and Naoda.

What happened in 2014:

Former Bengal Congress chief and Union minister Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury has been winning from this seat since 1999. In 2014, he received 5,83,549 votes while his nearest rival was Trinamool Congress’s singer-candidate Indranil Sen who could muster only 2,26,982 votes, losing by over 3.5 lakh votes. The third position holder was Revolutionary Socialist Party’s (RSP) Pramothes Mukherjee, who won from this seat three times in the 1990s, and he received 2,25,699 votes – not too far behind Sen. The BJP finished a distant fourth with its candidate Debes Adhikari receiving only 81,656 votes.

Total electors in Jangipur constituency in 2014 were 14,43,201.

Vote share:

The Congress’s vote-share in Baharampur in 2014 was 50.54 per cent while that of the TMC was 19.69 per cent and RSP 19.54. The BJP received 7.07 per cent vote-share.

History of Baharampur constituency results: A battleground between Congress and Left

Baharampur was once the stronghold of the RSP which won seven consecutive terms here between 1952 and 1980 with Tridib Chaudhuri winning all of them. Atish Chandra Sinha won as a Congress candidate for the first time in 1984 but the RSP was back to winning five consecutive terms again between 1989 and 1999 before Adhir Ranjan won his four successive terms.

Candidates contesting from Baharampur in 2019:

TMC: Apurba Sarkar;

BJP: Krishna Juardar Arya;

Left: Hasn’t given any candidate here so far

Congress: Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury