Bengal bypolls: Trinamool holds advantage amid four-cornered contest at Cooch Behar's Sitai after LS win

Kolkata: West Bengal's ruling Trinamool Congress is in an advantageous position amid the four-cornered contest in the Sitai Assembly constituency where bypolls will be held on November 13 after wresting the seat in the 2021 state polls and the Cooch Behar parliamentary seat this year.

Sitai is going for bypolls as sitting Trinamool legislator Jagadish Chandra Barma Basunia got elected from the Cooch Behar Lok Sabha constituency in the Parliamentary elections this year.

The party has fielded Basunia’s wife Sangita Roy, who is confident of her victory from Sitai, riding on the wave of her husband’s popularity and the strong organisational network of her party there.

Her closest contestant is BJP’s Dipak Kumar Roy, also a local.

Since the Congress-Left Front alliance has not fructified for the bypolls, both the All India Forward Bloc, a constituent of the Left Front, and Congress have fielded their candidates this time.

While Arun Kumar Barma is the Forward Bloc candidate, the Congress candidate is Harihar Roy Sinha.

Political observers opine that this four-cornered contest brings an added advantage for Trinamool in the Sitai bypolls with the ruling party all set to take advantage of the three-way division in the opposition vote.

The only uncomfortable factor for the ruling party is the mass grievance against the state government and Trinamool over the ghastly rape and murder of a junior doctor of R.G. Kar Medical College & Hospital within the hospital premises.

Trinamool’s electoral record from Sitai is not that impressive as Basunia was the first party candidate to get elected from there in the 2021 Assembly elections. Sitai was a strong Congress bastion from 1967 to 1977, with Congress candidate Md Fazle Haque getting elected for four consecutive terms in 1967, 1969, 1971 and 1972. However, the political equation at Sitai changed totally in 1977, the year which marked the beginning of the 34-year Left Front rule in West Bengal.

From 1977 to 2006, the Forward Bloc kept its sway over the seat, except in 1996, when an independent candidate got elected from there. The power equation changed again in favour of Congress with party candidates getting elected from there for three consecutive terms in 2006, 2011, and 2016.

It was only in 2021 when Trinamool Congress opened its account at Sitai with Basunia getting elected by a margin of little over 10,000 votes. With little less than 3,00,000 voters, the Sitai constituency is reserved for the Scheduled Castes. The voters of the constituency are heavily dependent on agriculture for their livelihood.