Dilip back on a bulldozer, adds spice to Kharagpur Sadar contest

Kharagpur: As one enters Kharagpur city from NH-16, winding through Kausalya, Bodga or Fire Brigade More, the cutouts are hard to miss. They read: ‘Kharagpur-e abar Dilipda'. For many, it is a do-or-die battle for the BJP veteran, who scripted his political debut here a decade ago."I have never left Kharagpur. I have been here for the past eight years. Kharagpur knows me and my track record," asserts Ghosh, the former BJP state chief and the man who led the party to its first major success in Bengal during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Unlike the rest of West Midnapore, where BJP jingles and speeches by central ministers play at regular intervals from campaign vehicles, the totos here are busy playing only the speeches of candidate Dilip Ghosh, with the sole exception being PM Narendra Modi. "I am a political worker. I work only on instructions from the party," says Ghosh as he prepares to board a chopper that will take him to Jhargram for a campaign.Ghosh claims it is Kharagpur that made him. In 2016, he entered a constituency that sent the same Congress MLA — Gyan Singh Sohanpal — to the assembly seven consecutive times. Ghosh won. He moved on from there. His 2019 Lok Sabha victory from Midnapore meant he did not just lead the BJP that time, he set an example.Yet, that very win required him to vacate his MLA seat. In the byelection that followed, Trinamool nominee Pradip Sarkar managed to win the seat. Sarkar's second attempt in 2021, however, ended in defeat, with BJP's actor-politician Hiran winning by 3,771 votes. Hiran has since been mired in personal controversy. At a time when Ghosh's marriage made headlines, the surfacing of an alleged "second marriage" for the actor-politician meant he had to migrate to Shyampukur. This has opened the door for Dilip's second attempt here, even as the baggage of his 2024 Lok Sabha loss in Durgapur still weighs on him. The "accidental politician" — as Ghosh refers to himself — claims that this time, Trinamool will not just be voted out of power, but into oblivion.Known for controversial remarks, Ghosh faced criticism over his threat to use bulldozers to evict encroachers — similar to tactics used in Uttar Pradesh — if the BJP triumphed in the assembly polls. Ghosh has an answer ready. "From Railway land to khas property (land in direct possession of the govt), from jungle areas to roadside strips — everything has been encroached upon in Bengal. Then there are areas where infiltrators have forcibly constructed houses," he claims.Trinamool's Sarkar is no stranger to this fight. He knows the constituency and the numbers for each ward and projects himself as the "real ghorer chhele" (son of the soil). "Tell me, if Ghosh was such a popular politician here, why did he not contest the Lok Sabha polls from here? And if Hiran was successful, why did he flee? Why is Hiran not even campaigning here? The truth is Ghosh has failed both as an MLA and an MP," claimed Sarkar.Voters, however, say they are tired of the friction between the state and the Centre, with neither taking the initiative to complete stalled projects or address issues like mounting pollution and the water crisis. "For a town sitting next to the oldest IIT, the unemployment figures carry a particular irony. We have factories with pollution but few jobs," claimed Ashok Vohra, a resident of Talbagicha. On top of all this, the SIR deletions have come as a major blow to all political leaders. In a constituency where margins remain below 5,000, wiping out 44,000 names might have serious repercussions.