On Monday, Isha Khan Choudhury, the Congress candidate for the Malda South Lok Sabha seat, expressed assurance that the party’s victory in both North and South Malda in the forthcoming elections will be driven by the public’s support.
“I am standing from South Malda. The situation is improving every day… The voters are making a tactical decision… In 2021, the Congress in the entire West Bengal lost all its MLA seats… Every time an election comes, the BJP starts talking about NRC and CAA, when the election is over, it dies down. The talk about NRC and CAA dies down. The public has become very wary and thinks now that it’s not a serious issue. So they’re voting freely from their heart now so that there’s no fear factor this time… We think that the public is with us, that the Congress will get through in South Malda and hopefully in North Malda also,” he told ANI.
In the electoral contest for the Malda South Lok Sabha constituency, Isha Khan Choudhury from the Congress will compete against Shanawaz Ali Rehan from the TMC and Sreerupa Mitra Chowdhury from the BJP.
The Malda South Lok Sabha constituency comprises seven assembly segments: Manikcha, English Bazar, Mothabar, Sujapur, Baishnab Nagar, Farakka, and Samserganj. The third phase of voting for Malda South is scheduled for May 7th.
Sukanta Majumdar, the Lok Sabha candidate from Balurghat and the leader of the West Bengal BJP, recently voiced optimism about the BJP’s strong chances of winning the South Malda seat.
“We won almost all seats in North Bengal last time, except South Malda. This time we will win all the seats and we will win the Malda South seat with a great margin. Here, the BJP will win 100 percent in North Bengal,” he told ANI on Sunday.
West Bengal, which has 42 Members of Parliament, is involved in all seven phases of voting. The first and second phases of voting occurred on April 19 and April 26, respectively. The remaining parliamentary seats will be contested on May 4, May 13, May 20, May 25, and June 1. Vote counting will take place on June 4.
Abu Hasem Khan Chowdhury (Dalu), a Congress leader and the current Member of Parliament for Malda South since 2009, has been securing victory in the seat, albeit with diminishing support in each successive election. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Abu Hasem’s margin of victory over Sreerupa Mitra Chaudhury was only 0.6%.
During the 2019 Lok Sabha election, Khagen Murmu, the incumbent Member of Parliament from Malda North and a BJP leader, won the seat with 509,524 votes. Mausam Noor, the Trinamool Congress candidate, secured second place with 425,236 votes, while Congress candidate Isha Khan Choudhury received 305,270 votes, placing third.
The primary competition in most of the state’s constituencies is between the BJP and the incumbent Trinamool Congress.
Although part of the INDIA bloc, the TMC does not allocate seats to the Left parties or Congress, unlike other alliance members in the state.
In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the TMC won 34 seats in the state, while the BJP managed to secure only 2 seats. The Congress secured four seats, and the CPI (M) also secured two.
In the 2019 elections, the BJP significantly improved its performance, securing 18 seats compared to the TMC’s 22. The Congress experienced a decrease in its total number of seats, winning only two, while the Left parties failed to secure any seats.