What was once considered one of the safest Trinamool Congress seats in Kolkata is now simmering with anger over vanishing jobs, nearly 43,500 deleted names from the electoral rolls post – SIR, allegations of a “syndicate raj” in neighbourhoods and studios, and growing resentment within the Bengali film industry itself.
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The urban seat, stretching from refugee colonies of Netajinagar and Ramgarh to film studios and apartment blocks of Tollygunj and Naktala, will see a triangular contest between four-time MLA and minister Aroop Biswas, BJP debutant and actor Papiya Adhikari and CPI(M) candidate Partha Pratim Biswas.
For the BJP, defeating Aroop Biswas would amount to breaching one of the TMC’s last great urban fortresses. For the ruling party, holding Tollygunj has become a test of whether the Biswas brothers still command the unquestioned authority they once did.
For two decades, Tollygunj has been Aroop Biswas’s political fortress. He has won every election here since 2006 and in 2021 defeated BJP’s Babul Supriyo by 50,080 votes.
The constituency had around 2.73 lakh voters before the Special Intensive Revision. After the exercise, the electorate has fallen to 2,28,883, with nearly 43,500 names deleted.Also Read: West Bengal sports minister resigns amid Messi visit chaos, officials face show-cause notices
The sharp fall has unsettled residents of Netajinagar, Ramgarh, Regent Park and Naktala, many of whom trace their roots to post-Partition migration from East Pakistan.
“Entire families are finding one or two names missing. People are scared and angry,” said Prabir Sen, a retired central government employee in Netajinagar.
Sen said the issue has combined with another anxiety that increasingly dominates conversations in the constituency: the flight of the young.
“Many boys and girls have left for Bengaluru, Pune, Hyderabad and abroad because there are no jobs here. More and more flats have only old parents living in them,” he said.
That sense of decline has become politically significant in Tollygunj, which despite its affluent pockets and cultural prestige continues to suffer from poor roads, waterlogging and crumbling civic infrastructure.
Tollygunj is the heart of Tollywood, home to studios, production houses, technicians, actors and unions. And for years, that world has been shaped by the extraordinary influence of the Biswas brothers.
While Aroop Biswas dominates the constituency politically, his younger brother Swaroop Biswas heads the Federation of Cine Technicians and Workers of Eastern India, the industry’s most powerful union body.
Together, the brothers are widely seen as exercising a formidable hold over the film and television sector.
That influence has helped the TMC build a strong base among technicians and junior artistes. But it has also created resentment.
“Everybody knows that nothing major moves in Tollygunj without the blessings of the Biswas brothers,” said a producer who has worked in the Bengali film industry for more than 20 years.
Several producers and directors privately complain that the line between political authority and control over the industry has increasingly blurred.
There have been periodic tensions between the Biswas brothers and sections of the film world. Some actors and directors who criticised the ruling party or refused to follow the line of the federation headed by Swaroop Biswas allegedly found themselves isolated or denied work.
“There is a feeling that unless one is close to the ruling establishment, it becomes difficult to survive in the industry,” said an actor living in Regent Estate.
The anger has sharpened in recent months after allegations that some artistes had been informally boycotted by the federation locally.
Some producers describe the system in Tollygunj as a “syndicate raj”.
In areas such as Bansdroni, Naktala and Baishnabghata, residents complain of local syndicates allegedly linked to the ruling party controlling construction materials and real-estate projects.
“If somebody wants to build a house or renovate a flat, local groups immediately appear and say sand, cement and labour must come through them,” said Sabyasachi Mitra, a resident of Naktala.
The BJP is seeking to convert that resentment into votes.
Papiya Adhikari has centred her campaign on corruption, political control and what she calls the anger of refugee families over changing demographics and deleted names from voter rolls.
“The scars of Partition are still there among many families in Tollygunj.
They are worried about infiltration and also angry over corruption and the removal of genuine names from the rolls,” she said.
Adhikari also referred to the arrest of former minister Partha Chatterjee from his Naktala residence in the school jobs scam and said the scandal had reinforced the perception of the TMC as corrupt.
Aroop Biswas, however, dismissed the BJP’s challenge and argued that the election would again be decided by Bengali identity and anger against the SIR exercise.
“There is deep resentment against the BJP and the Election Commission for the harassment caused by the revision of electoral rolls. Bengal will reject outsiders,” he said.
Biswas also rejected allegations that he or his brother exercised undue influence over the film industry.
“No government has done more for artists and technicians. We modernised studios and stood by the Bengali film industry in every crisis,” he said.
Partha Pratim Biswas said the TMC had turned Tollygunj into a “mafia raj”, while the BJP was trying to polarise voters.
“The TMC has created fear. But supporting the BJP would mean encouraging fascism. People are angry with both,” he said.
But in a seat where voter turnout has steadily fallen from 78.08 per cent in 2011 to 72.61 per cent in 2021, and where thousands of names have vanished from the rolls, the election appears more open than at any time in the last decade.
