Bengal: Jadavpur LS seat to witness triangular contest between actor, scholar and a Young Turk

Kolkata : The middle-class dominated Jadavpur Lok Sabha constituency will witness a triangular contest between an actor, scholar and a Young Turk during the upcoming Lok Sabha election.

Political stalwarts like the former Lok Sabha speaker Somnath Chatterjee and the incumbent West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee have both been elected as MPs from the Jadavpur Lok Sabha seat in the past.

Since 2009, Trinamool Congress has been comfortably winning this constituency but every time the party had to choose a different candidate. The party has now fielded actress-turned-politician Saayoni Ghosh.

In 2009, the party candidate singer-turned-politician Kabir Suman got elected with a thumping majority only to be replaced by historian Sugata Bose in 2014 general elections, who is the grandnephew of Subhash Chandra Bose. In 2019, Trinamool Congress replaced Bose and fielded actress-turned-politician Mimi Chakraborty.

For 2024, Mimi declined re-nomination, and Trinamool fielded Saayoni Ghosh. The two common complaints against both Kabir Suman and Mimi Chakraborty were their rare availability within the constituency to address the grievances of the common voters and negligible participation in Parliamentary debates.

The question remains whether Ghosh will be different from her predecessors or will continue to face the same complaints from voters and critics. Ghosh has said that she realises the responsibility of an MP which is much beyond making trips to the national capital at the cost of public exchequer. She also said that she is aware of the importance of being present at the Parliament and highlighting the public issues.

The other challenges for her are the strong candidates fielded by both BJP and CPI(M). BJP has fielded scholar-turned-politician and author Anirban Ganguly. Earlier, he unsuccessfully contested from Bolpur assembly constituency in Birbhum district in the 2021 assembly polls. However, despite being defeated, Ganguly was able to improve the vote share of BJP to almost 41 per cent, from a paltry 9.46 per cent in the 2016 assembly polls.

“The previous Trinamool Congress MPs from Jadavpur forgot the people of the constituency after getting elected. So I am appealing to voters to select any candidate this time who will be with them round the year after getting elected and also highlight their grievances in the Parliament,” Ganguly said.

Equally strong is the CP(M)’s Young Turk and former state president of the party’s student wing SFI, Srijan Bhattacharya. An academically bright alumnus of the iconic Jadavpur University, Bhattacharya’s links with Jadavpur constituencies since his days of student politics had been quite in-depth.

“Jadavpur, being thoroughly middle-class dominated with a sizable population of people coming from erstwhile East Bengal after partition had been traditionally left-inclined for a long time. My only target is to revive that ‘Red Fort’ and I will leave no stone unturned for that. An ideal MP from Jadavpur should have a thorough knowledge of the aspirations of the voters of the constituency.