West Bengal: BJP candidate hopes to stop TMC's juggernaut in Cooch Behar

COOCH BEHAR: TMC is all geared up to repeat its victory run in

Cooch Behar Lok Sabha constituency

in West Bengal, which goes to the polls in the first phase on April 11, but a turncoat who defected to BJP may well be its nemesis in the seat.


Eleven contestants, including those from the mainstream parties such as TMC, BJP, All India Forward Bloc (AIFB) and Congress are in the fray, but the main fight will be between TMC and BJP.

The constituency has the distinction of housing 51 enclaves which became part of India in 2015 after the exchange with Bangladesh. The enclaves have 15,000 dwellers.

The seat has a total of 18,09,598 voters out of which 9,40,948 are men and 8,68,632 are women. There are around 18 voters from the third gender.

With the seat located on the Indo-Bangla border, infiltration, livelihood for the enclave dwellers and employment for the youth are the main poll issues.

The seat is one of those parliamentary seats which will witness a pitched battle between turncoats. TMC candidate Paresh Chandra Adhikary is a former Left party Forward Bloc member who had switched over to Mamata Banerjee's party last year and BJP's Nisith Pramanik was a leader of Trinamool Youth Congress till two months ago.

The Congress has fielded Piya Roy Chowdhury and the Left Front Gobinda Roy of AIFB.

Cooch Behar

is one of the few seats where TMC was forced to drop its sitting MP due to infighting in the party.

As a result Adhikary has found favour over Partha Pratim Ray.

Adhikary told PTI that the people would vote for the developmental policies of the West Bengal government led by chief minister Mamata Banerjee.

"We will increase our margin over that of last time. In the 2016 bypoll we had won this seat by a margin of four lakh votes but this time we will win by a margin of 6-7 lakh votes," TMC district president and state cabinet minister Rabindra Nath Ghosh told PTI.

The BJP, which has made heavy inroads in the district in the last five years, too is confident of victory. It has marked the seat as one of those the party hopes to win this time.

"The people are fed up with TMC's misrule in the district and want to teach it a lesson. They are just waiting to vote for BJP," Pramanik told PTI.

Pramanik, who was once a blue-eyed boy of the TMC in the district, fell out with the party after he tried to field some of his loyalists in the last panchayat polls but was denied permission.

He had defied the party's decision and fielded around 300 independent candidates in the rural polls. More than 50 percent of them won. He was since then sidelined in the party and was relieved of all posts.

Pramanik, a graduate in fashion designing, bid his time, switched over to BJP in March and was nominated from the seat.

The TMC had tried to make his candidature an issue by citing 11 criminal cases against him in his affidavit to the Election Commission.

The cases include those of attempt to murder, outraging the modesty of women, dacoity and theft and Pramanik has denied the charges as baseless.

His candidature has led to resentment within the BJP district leadership as several ticket aspirants and old timers were overlooked to make space for Pramanik. BJP workers had hit the streets protesting against his candidature as soon a his candidature was announced.

But at the same time his candidature has energised the party organisation in the district with thousands of party workers joining BJP from TMC.

Senior BJP leader and BJP Minority Morcha president Ali Hossain, who was himself one of the aspirants from the seat, felt Pramanik joining the party has increased the chances of winning the seats by leaps and bounds.

A quick look at the sharp increase in voting percentage in favour of BJP in the last five years from the 2014

Lok Sabha

polls to the 2016 by-poll, following the death of the sitting TMC MP Renuka Sinha, shows how BJP is all set to put up a tough fight in the seat.

In 2014 general elections, the TMC had won the seat by securing 39.51 percent votes followed by Forward Bloc which secured 32.98 percent. BJP had finished third with around 16 per cent votes.

But within two years political dynamics changed drastically as TMC retained the seat in the 2016 by-poll by securing 59 percent votes and BJP outsmarted AIFB to became the first runner up by bagging around 28 per cent votes. AIFB got just six per cent.

Cooch Behar is a former princely state and shares borders with Bangladesh. The constituency had come into being in 1957 and had has been a bastion of the Forward Bloc since 1962.

Under the leadership of former AIFB leader and state cabinet minister Kamal Guha and Amarendra Roy Pradhan the seat was considered to be a impregnable fortress of the party.

But in 2014, TMC bagged the seat and won most of the seven assembly seats in the 2016 assembly polls.

Minority section comprises around 28 per cent of the population. The Rajbanshi community, an ethnic group of the region, holds sway in four of the assembly constituencies and both TMC and BJP have been trying to woo the voters.

AIFB's Gobinda Roy hoped that people would vote for the party as both TMC and BJP has failed the people of the constituency.