TMC names late MLA’s daughter candidate for Kaliganj bypolls
Times of India | 28 May 2025
123 Kaliganj (Nadia): Trinamool on Tuesday named 38-year-old Alifa Ahmed its candidate for the Kaliganj bypolls scheduled on June 19. Alifa is the daughter of Nasiruddin Ahamed, the Kaliganj MLA whose death necessitated the bypolls.Alifa used to work as a project manager in a multinational company in Kolkata until she took a plunge into politics and won a Nadia zilla parishad seat in the 2023 civic polls. Trinamool is the first party to announce its candidate for the seat. Addressing a press conference, Trinamool spokesperson Jay Prakash Majumdar said, "Alifa is not a political novice. She was working with her father and is also a zilla parishad member. ""CM Mamata Banerjee has endorsed her nomination. We firmly believe, people in Kaliganj will bless her and she will win a bigger mandate than her father's 47,000-win margin in 2021," he added. Alifa said, "Politics is not new to me. I have grown up seeing my father work. I started helping him (campaign) in 2011." Kaliganj falls under the Krishnanagar Lok Sabha constituency. It was a Congress bastion from 1951 to the late 1990s. When Congress' grip started loosening, RSP — a Left Front constituent — won the seat four times, twice consecutively. In the bypolls, however, it's not Congress but BJP which has emerged as Trinamool's biggest challenger with a 30% vote share.