Three parties, three defectors battle it out for Raiganj honours
Times of India | 24 April 2024
RAIGANJ: In Raiganj, it may well be a battle of defectors. Of the three primary contenders, Krishna Kalyani left BJP to receive a nomination from Trinamool, Kartik Paul left Congress to become a BJP candidate and Ali Imran Ramz defected from Forward Bloc to get a Congress ticket.
Buoyed by its gains in 2021 polls, TMC is eyeing its best chances to win the seat it has never won.In the past 62 years, Raiganj had chosen a Congress candidate 10 times, Left four times and even the Janata Party and BJP once, but never elected a TMC candidate for Lok Sabha. But the 2021 assembly polls gave a lead by 1.7 lakh votes to TMC.
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If in Kaliyaganj, one finds dominance of Rajbanshis and Polias among the population, in Raiganj, it's the refugee Bengali Hindus. The demography changes once one enters Goalpokhar and Islampore. Adjacent Bihar has influence on these localities.
The producer of a lion's share of the state's food grain, the constituency has little urban flavour save Raiganj town. Three other municipalities - Kaliayaganj, Dalkhola, and Islampore - are not urban in the truest sense. People here live mostly on agriculture and small trade. But in recent years, the number of migrant labourers is increasing.
Bhanu Pal of Goalpokhar or Jahedur Rahman of Gangamoyla in Islampore rues the loss in potato cultivation this year.
Come election, this erstwhile Congress bastion recalls names like Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi. But over the years, Congress lost its vote bank to TMC and BJP made an inroad in the Hindu-dominated Kaliaganj, Hemtabad or Raiganj. Last time, BJP's Debashree Choudhury made the most of the division of Muslim votes among Congress, CPM and TMC in winning the seat by 60,000 votes. Since then, BJP in the district was only on the wane.
Krishna Kalyani, the industrialist, had won the seat for BJP in 2021 but shifted allegiance to TMC. But this turncoat was not accepted well by the local party representaives.
BJP's Kartik Paul, once a close aide of Dasmunshi, has little impact beyond Kaliaganj apart from the Modi factor. Congress's Ali Imran Ramz (Victor), a three-time MLA of Forward Bloc, banks on his clean image.