Siliguri: Siliguri mayor Goutam Deb said on Friday that he would want to contest from Siliguri the 2026 assembly polls, and not Dabgram-Phulbari, which sent him to the assembly twice. Reacting to this, Dabgram-Phulbari BJP MLA Sikha Chatterjee said, “yeh dar mujhe achcha laga (I liked this fear)”. Deb was elected from Dabgram-Phulbari in 2011 and 2016, and was defeated by Chatterjee in the 2021 polls by a margin of 27,593 votes.“I lost from this constituency where I won twice. Personally, I lost nothing, and became the mayor of Siliguri. Dabgram-Phulbari’s people will realise what work is being done here now and what I did in my tenure. I request people to support the TMC candidate and ensure the party’s victory. I want to contest from Siliguri, my birthplace,” said Deb on the sidelines of the foundation stone-laying ceremony of a road in Fulbari’s Paschim Dhantala.“State govt does the work here and BJP wins the election. How long will this happen?” he asked. Saying that Deb was moving away in of fear of defeat, Chatterjee said: “This is remarkable. TMC won’t give him a ticket from Dabgram-Phulbari. He did nothing but mislead people here. Even as a minister, what did he do for them? Also, was Siliguri ever his priority earlier?”North Bengal politics has been seeing a lot of churnings ahead of the polls. On Thursday, Kurseong BJP MLA BP Sharma joined TMC.
