With two days to go for the sixth phase of the 2024 Lok Sabha election, the village of Moyna in Tamluk constituency lined up excitedly to meet the Trinamool Congress’ candidate, 28-year-old Debangshu Bhattacharya, who is locked in a bitter contest with former Calcutta High Court judge and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate Abhijit Gangopadhyay.
“We are team Tamluk and we have to keep the BJP at bay. Do I have the blessings of the mothers and sisters of Moyna?” Mr. Bhattacharya asked the crowd of villagers, while referring to his rival candidate as a “fake judge”. The audience, mostly women, burst into a cheer, clapping and raising their hands to show their support.
However, while Trinamool’s Mr. Bhattacharya vigorously campaigned in his constituency, Mr. Gangopadhyay remained out of sight, owing to a 24-hour censure by the Election Commission of India following his controversial remarks on West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
Before Mr. Gangopadhyay had joined hands with the BJP, he caught people’s imagination as the Calcutta High Court judge who ordered a CBI probe into the alleged disparities in the State’s teacher recruitment process and whose rulings led to the arrest of a senior Minister and three Trinamool MLAs. Mr. Gangopadhyay earned the epithet of a “crusader against corruption”. While joining the BJP, he said his aim was to “usher in the end of a corrupt government and corrupt party”, touting the BJP as “the only national party that can fight against the Trinamool”.
His decision to join politics immediately after his resignation from the judiciary, however, attracted doubts over his judgments as a High Court judge.
“I believe Mr. Gangopadhyay is one of the BJP’s least impactful candidates in West Bengal. His political experience is only three months old, he has no political weight,” Mr. Bhattacharya told The Hindu.
“I am thankful he is my opponent here, it will only make it easier for me to win,” Mr. Bhattacharya said, who added that the 2024 Lok Sabha election results in West Bengal, particularly in Tamluk, would be determined by the women’s vote.
“Abhijit Gangopadhyay is anti-women; he did not even spare the Chief Minister of a State from uncouth comments,” Mr. Bhattacharya said. Mr. Gangopadhyay declined to comment.
When asked about the sexual assault allegations against Trinamool leader Shahjahan Sheikh by the women in Sandeshkhali, Mr. Bhattacharya was quick to refer to the unverified viral videos where a local BJP leader was caught saying that the women were made to file false complaints.
Tamluk spans seven Assembly constituencies across coastal Purba Medinipur district in south-eastern Bengal. Home to freedom fighters like Khudiram Bose and Matangini Hazra, and documented in ancient texts as the fertile river port of Tamralipta, Tamluk constituency includes critical Assembly seats like the industry-rich Haldia and the contentious Nandigram, which witnessed a violent civil resistance in 2007 alongside Singur against the possible acquisition of land by the then-Communist Party of India (Marxist) government.
In 2019, Trinamool candidate Dibyendu Adhikari, brother of BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari, won the Tamluk Parliamentary seat with a 50% vote share. Although both brothers were members of Trinamool back then, Suvendu joined the BJP ahead of the 2021 State Assembly elections, where he defeated Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in a high-voltage fight in Nandigram Assembly constituency. Currently, Dibyendu is also part of the BJP but he is not in the electoral fray.
Meanwhile, 30-year-old advocate Sayan Banerjee of the CPI(M) is certain that his advantage would stem from voters’ frustration around the incessant mud-slinging among his two rival parties. “People are fed up with this Trinamool-BJP binary, they want a change,” Mr. Banerjee told The Hindu.
For Mr. Banerjee, one of the many young candidates fielded by the CPI(M) in Bengal this year, the ghosts of the CPI(M)’s past loom large. In Tamluk constituency lies Nandigram, where the then CPI(M)-led government’s plan to establish a chemical hub in 2007 and the consequent civil agitations against land acquisition had sounded the death knell for the party’s 34-year-long rule in the State.
“The history of Nandigram is nothing more than a conspiracy. The Chief Minister has now admitted that it was the work of Suvendu Adhikari and his father Shishir Adhikari,” Mr. Banerjee told The Hindu. He added that for him, a more pressing issue is the state of Nandigram’s youth, who according to him were forced to become migrant labourers as a result of the rampant unemployment in the area. “On the other hand, the industrial belt at Haldia, the thermal plant at Kolaghat were all developed by the Left. That gives me an advantage here,” he added.
