Bengal bypolls: 34 candidates contest four Assembly seats

Kolkata, July 9 (IANS) The fate of 34 candidates will be sealed on Wednesday in the bypolls to four Assembly constituencies in West Bengal.

The four Assembly constituencies are Bagda in North 24 Parganas district, Ranaghat-Dakshin in Nadia, Raiganj in North Dinajpur and Maniktala in Kolkata.

Maniktala is going for bypolls because of the demise of the erstwhile Trinamool Congress legislator, Sadhan Pande.

The bypolls in Raiganj, Bagda and Ranaghat-Dakshin have been necessitated by the resignation of the erstwhile BJP legislators from there namely Krishna Kalyani, Biswajit Das and Mukut Mani Adhikari, who contested unsuccessfully as Trinamool Congress candidates from three Parliamentary constituencies in the recently concluded Lok Sabha polls.

While Kalyani and Adhikari had been nominated as candidates by Trinamool Congress in the bypolls from the respective Assembly constituencies of Raiganj and Ranaghat-Dakshin, Das had not been that fortunate. At Maniktala, the ruling party has fielded Sadhan Panda’s widow Supti Pande.

It will be a three-cornered contest in Raiganj, Ranaghat-Dakshin and Maniktala among the Trinamool Congress, BJP and Congress-Left Front alliance. However, in Bagda there will be a four-concerned fight as both Congress and All India Forward Bloc have fielded candidates besides Trinamool Congress and BJP.

As per the past poll statistics in the 2021 West Bengal Assembly elections as well as the Assembly-wise results in the recently concluded Lok Sabha polls, the BJP is comfortably ahead in Raiganj, Ranaghat-Dakshin and Bagda. In the case of Maniktala Trinamool Congress is marginally ahead.

Bypolls will be conducted on Wednesday under tight security cover, with the Election Commission of India (ECI) having decided to deploy as many as 55 companies of Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) personnel.

The maximum deployment will be at Bagda at 16 companies followed by Ranaghat-Dakshin at 15. The Commission has decided to deploy 12 companies of CAPF each for Raiganj and Maniktala. There will be 100 per cent webcasting for the bypolls.