KOLKATA: The battle between the state CM and the assembly’s opposition leader will now shift from Nandigram to Bhowanipore.Trinamool Congress on Tuesday said Mamata Banerjee will be re-contesting from the seat, which will go to polls in the second phase on April 29. This comes a day after leader of opposition Suvendu Adhikari’s name was announced as the BJP candidate in Nandigram as well as in Bhowanipore.In 2021, Banerjee fought against Adhikari in the latter’s home turf Nandigram. Now, Adhikari will fight against Banerjee in Bhowanipore —the CM’s home turf.“I am confident of my party’s victory in Bengal and Bhowanipore will lead the way,” the CM said when asked by reporters on the Bhowanipore polls. She added, “I have full faith in people. They know the kind of work I do for them. Iwork 365 days a year, whether it is during Durga Puja, Eid, or installation of Jain Manstambha. So it is better not to question my commitment. But this fight is not just mine but our party’s fight and we will win Bhowanipore by the highest possible margin.”Bhowanipore is CM Banerjee’s home and she has never lost any poll here. Since 1991, she has been elected as an MP, and an MLA since 2011.After taking charge as Bengal CM in 2011, she chose Bhowanipore as her assembly segment. She did not contest the assembly elections that year and after her party’s victory, she contested in a bypoll to secure a decisive victory from Bhowanipore, winning by a margin of 54,213 votes.In 2016, her winning margin narrowed as she defeated nearest competitor, Congress candidate Deepa Dasmunshi — backed by the Left — by 25,301 votes. The BJP polled only 26,299 votes that year.In 2021, even as Mamata contested from Nandigram — and lost to Adhikari by 1,956 votes — Trinamool held on to Bhowanipore as Sovandeb Chattopadhyay won by a margin of 28,719 votes, beating BJP’s Rudranil Ghosh. Notably, the BJP’s vote share rose significantly to 35.2%, indicating a growing foothold.Banerjee returned to fight the Bhowanipore bypoll later that year. Bhowanipore sent her back to the Bengal assembly as a third-time CM by a 58,835-vote margin.But for this year’s election, BJP sources said they were looking to capitalise on the constituency’s diverse demographic profile, which includes a sizeable population of Gujaratis, Sikhs, Marwaris and Biharis.It will be a different Bhowanipore that will go to polls on April 29. The SIR has axed 41,068 voters from its 2-lakh rolls. It has now shrunk by 20%. A study of the final 1.6 lakh electoral roll also found that in Bhowanipore, nearly 56.7% of voters who are flagged in the ‘under adjudication’ category in the final electoral rolls are Muslims. But the Muslim share of population in Bhowanipore is 20%, as per 2011 Census, said Souptik Halder, who along with Ashin Chakraborty and Sabir Ahamed conducted the analysis.Earlier, the analysis revealed that Muslims accounted for only 22.7% of voters marked as ‘Absent, Shifted, or Dead/ Duplicate’ (ASDD), the ‘unmapped’ share was approximately 26%, which broadly matched Muslim population of the constituency. But this changed sharply in ‘‘logical discrepancy’’ list, where 52% of those flagged are Muslims. According to Chakraborty, Bhowanipore, despite being a mixed community, has a disproportionately high number of Muslims among those under scrutiny. “Their share is nearly three times their share in population. In a high-profile seat like this, and given that Muslims are often considered loyal TMC voters, this highlights SIR impact,” he added. Halder feels, “A booth-wise analysis based on 2021 and 2024 results indicates that if voters ‘under adjudication’ are unable to vote, win margin for TMC drops significantly, and in some booths the lead even vanishes entirely.”
