Considered to be a bastion of the Trinamool Congress, it has been won by the party since its formation in 1998. Prior to it, the seat was a stronghold of Congress. Unusually, this seat was renamed multiple times.
Kolkata Dakshin Lok Sabha constituency (earlier known as Calcutta South Lok Sabha constituency) is one of the 543 Lok Sabha (parliamentary) constituencies in India. The constituency centres on the southern part of Kolkata in West Bengal. While four of the seven legislative assembly segments on No. 23 Kolkata Dakshin Lok Sabha constituency are in Kolkata district.
Considered to be a bastion of the Trinamool Congress, it has been won by the party since its formation in 1998. Prior to it, the seat was a stronghold of Indian National Congress. TMC’s founder and current chief minister of West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee was the longest holder of the seat.
The Kolkata Dakshin Lok Sabha constituency is one of the 42 parliamentary constituencies in the Indian state of West Bengal. It covers a significant portion of the southern part of Kolkata, the capital city of West Bengal. This constituency has been a stronghold for the All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) in recent years. Some of the key areas within this constituency include Ballygunge, Tollygunge, Jadavpur, Behala East, and Behala West.
Members of Parliament
Syama Prasad Mookerjee: He was an Indian politician, barrister and academician, who served as India’s first Minister for Industry and Supply (currently known as Minister of Commerce and Industries) in Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s cabinet. After falling out with Nehru, protesting against the Liaquat–Nehru Pact, Mukherjee resigned from Nehru’s cabinet. With the help of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, he founded the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the predecessor to the Bharatiya Janata Party, in 1951. He was also the president of Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha from 1943 to 1946. He was arrested by the Jammu and Kashmir Police in 1953 when he tried to cross the border of the state. He was provisionally diagnosed of a heart attack and shifted to a hospital but died a day later.
Since the Bharatiya Janata Party is the successor to the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, Mookerjee is also regarded as the founder of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) by its members. Dr Mookerjee was inspired by the ideologies of Swami Pranavananda, founder of Bharat Sevashram Sangha and considered him as his guru.
Sadhan Chandra Gupta: He was an Indian lawyer and politician. Gupta became the first blind parliamentarian in independent India in 1953, and later served as Advocate General of West Bengal. Gupta was born in Dacca on 7 November 1917. His father, Jogesh Chandra Gupta, was a lawyer at the Calcutta High Court and a leader of the Indian National Congress. Sadhan Gupta became permanently blind after contracting smallpox during his childhood. Gupta went to school at the Calcutta Blind School. Later he studied at Presidency College (Economics, graduated with honours) and Calcutta University (Law). He became involved in radical politics during his student days, joining the Communist Party of India in 1939. He served as president of the Bengal Provincial Students Federation. Gupta contested the Calcutta South East seat in the 1951–1952 election, challenging Dr. Syama Prasad Mukherjee. In parliament, Gupta was noted for his flawless English. He would softly type braille whilst listening to the debates. Gupta was re-elected to the Lok Sabha in the 1957 general election, from the Calcutta East constituency. He obtained 143,350 votes (62.68%).
Ganesh Ghosh: He was an Indian independence activist, revolutionary and politician. Ganesh Ghosh born in a Bengali Kayastha family which hailed from Chittagong, now in Bangladesh. In 1922, he took admission in the Bengal Technical Institute in Calcutta. Later, he became a member of the Chittagong Jugantar party. He participated in the Chittagong armoury raid, along with Surya Sen and other revolutionaries on 18 April 1930. After the split in Communist Party of India in 1964, Ganesh sided with the Communist Party of India (Marxist). He was elected to the West Bengal Legislative Assembly in 1952, 1957 and 1962 as a Communist Party of India candidate from Belgachia. He was elected to the 4th Lok Sabha in 1967 from Calcutta South Lok Sabha constituency as a Communist Party of India (Marxist) candidate. In the 1971 Lok Sabha he was again the Communist Party of India (Marxist) candidate from Calcutta South Lok Sabha constituency. This time he was defeated by 26-year-old Priya Ranjan Dash Munshi who won his first Lok Sabha election, fighting on the Congress (R) ticket.
Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi: He was an Indian National Congress politician, former Union Minister and a member of the 14th Lok Sabha of India. He represented the Raiganj constituency of West Bengal. He died on 20 November 2017, aged 72, after nine years in a coma following a massive stroke. Dasmushi entered politics as a member of the Chhatra Parishad, the student’s wing of the state Congress unit while studying in the Calcutta University as a protégé of veteran Congress leader Atulya Ghosh when the state was hit with the first-wave of Naxalite-Maoist insurgency, which saw large number of students from well-reputed colleges & universities of Calcutta abandon their studies to take up arms against the state in lines of the people’s war strategy of Naxalite ideologue Charu Majumdar. He, alongside Subrata Mukherjee & Somen Mitra was the prominent militant face of the Chhatra Parishad who clashed heads-on with the student cadres of both CPI (M) & CPI (ML) alike in the politically turbulent atmosphere of the state caused by a fractured mandate in the state elections & the Naxalite insurgents. Known for his organisational capability, fiery speeches & strong anti-Communist stance, Dasmunshi was violently assaulted by CPI (M) cadres in 1967 after a street rally in the suburbs of North Calcutta, which left him with a fractured arm, thereby cementing his image as a firebrand anti-Communist leader. Dasmunsi was made state president of Indian Youth Congress in from 1970 to 1971. But his failure to keep his electoral promise saw him lose the seat in the 1989 general election. He also led a fiery campaign against the CPI(M)-led Left Front government of the state in 1987 state election as the state PCC chief, but failed to dislodge the Communists. He again lost from Howrah in 1991, but was re-elected back from there in 1996. From 1999, he was the MP from Raiganj constituency. In 2004, in the First Manmohan Singh ministry, he was appointed as the Minister of Parliamentary Affairs and the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Dasmunsi served as the president of the All India Football Federation for almost twenty years, from 1988 to 2008. He was succeeded by Nationalist Congress Party politician Praful Patel. Dasmushi was re-elected as the state PCC chief in 2008 & remained so until 2010, when he was replaced with Manas Bhunia.
Satya Sadhan Chakraborty: He was an Indian academic and politician from West Bengal belonging to Communist Party of India (Marxist). He was a member of the Lok Sabha and West Bengal Legislative Assembly. He also served as a minister of the Government of West Bengal. Chakraborty was born on 1933 at Harina in Comilla. He graduated from Bangabasi College. Later, he completed postgraduate studies from University of Calcutta in political science. Chakraborty was a professor of the Vidyasagar College. He also coauthored a book titled Bharoter Shasonbyabostha O Rajneeti with Nimai Pramanik. The book is used as a textbook in graduate level. Besides, he served as the general secretary of the West Bengal College and University Teachers’ Association and All India Federation of University & College Teachers’ Organisations. He was elected as a member of the Lok Sabha from Calcutta South in 1980. Later, he was elected as a member of the West Bengal Legislative Assembly from Chakdaha in 1991, 1996 and 2001. He also served as the Higher Education Minister of the Government of West Bengal from 1991 to 2006.
Biplab Dasgupta: He was a Marxian economist, former member of Rajya Sabha, Lok Sabha and the Bengal state committee of the CPI(M). He was the author of several books on the agrarian economy of India. He received his MA in economics from the University of Calcutta. In 1967 he received the PhD of London University as a member of SOAS for the thesis “Oil prices and the Indian market, 1886-1964” where his supervisor was Edith Penrose. He also received an MSc degree in computer science from the University of London. He was a popular student leader of 1950s and became a member of CPI in 1955. He joined CPI(M) in 1964. He was elected a member of the state committee in 1980. He became a central committee member of the CPI(M) in 1985. A teacher at London and Sussex universities, Dasgupta acted as adviser to UN bodies including FAO, ILO, UNESCO, UNRISD and UNEP between 1972 and 1978. He was also the editor of Nandan Patrika, the cultural monthly of CPI(M) . He was elected to Lok Sabha in 1989.
Mamata Banerjee: He is an Indian politician, who is serving as the eighth and current chief minister of the Indian state of West Bengal since 20 May 2011, the first woman to hold the office. Having served multiple times as a Union Cabinet Minister, Mamata Banerjee became the Chief Minister of West Bengal for the first time in 2011. She founded the All India Trinamool Congress (AITC or TMC) in 1998 after separating from the Indian National Congress, and became its second chairperson later in 2001. She previously served twice as Minister of Railways, the first woman to do so. She is also the second female Minister of Coal, and Minister of Human Resource Development, Youth Affairs and Sports, Women and Child Development in the cabinet of the Indian government. She served as the member of West Bengal Legislative Assembly from Bhabanipur from 2011 to 2021. She contested the Nandigram assembly seat and lost to the BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari in the 2021 West Bengal Assembly elections, though her party won a large majority of seats. She is the third West Bengal Chief Minister to lose an election from her own constituency, after Prafulla Chandra Sen in 1967 and Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee in 2011. Mamata challenged the result of Nandigram Constituency in Calcutta High Court and the matter is sub judice. She led her party to a landslide victory in the 2021 West Bengal assembly polls. She got elected as member of West Bengal Legislative Assembly again from Bhabanipur constituency in the bypoll. She is the only female incumbent Chief Minister in India at present.
Subrata Bakshi: He is an Indian politician who currently serves as Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha from West Bengal. He is the General Secretary of All India Trinamool Congress and State President of West Bengal Trinamool Congress. He was the Minister for Public Works and the Minister for Transport in the Government of West Bengal in 2011. He was also an MLA, elected from the Bhabanipur constituency in the 2011 West Bengal state assembly election. He was elected to parliament from Kolkata Dakshin constituency after Mamata Banerjee resigned to become a member of the West Bengal Legislative Assembly. He was elected on 10 December 2011 with a margin of 2,30,999 votes, and re-elected in 2014.
Mala Roy: She is an Indian politician who has been a Member of Lok Sabha for Kolkata Dakshin since 2019. She is a member of All India Trinamool Congress party.
She has been the Chairperson of Kolkata Municipal Corporation since 2015.n 1995, Roy was elected to the Kolkata Municipal Corporation as a councillor from ward no.88. She contested as a candidate of Indian National Congress party and defeated her nearest rival by a margin of 576 votes. In 2000, she contested as a candidate of Trinamool Congress party and retained her seat by defeating Swadeshranjan Das of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) by a margin of 3,205 votes. In 2005, she contested as a candidate of the Nationalist Congress Party and defeated Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar of Trinamool by 1,900 votes. In 2010, she was re-elected, this time as a candidate of Congress party.