West Bengal Assembly election 2021, Sitalkuchi profile: TMC's Hiten Barman had won constituency in 2016

The Assembly/Vidhan Sabha constituency of Sitalkuchi is located in the Cooch Behar district of West Bengal. It falls under the Cooch Behar (SC) Lok Sabha constituency. The constituency, reserved for Scheduled Castes candidates, has 2,75,415 electors and 301 polling stations. Voter turnout in previous election The voter turnout in Sitalkuchi in the previous Assembly election was 88.05 percent. Past election results and winners In the 2016 West Bengal Assembly election, Hiten Barman of the All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) won the Sitalkuchi seat. The AITC, BJP and CPM got 44.18, 11.89 and 37.45 percent votes respectively in the 2016 polls. Barman had emerged victorious from the constituency in the 2011 Assembly polls too. The Sitalkuchi Assembly constituency is expected to go to polls in April or May 2021, as part of the West Bengal Assembly election 2021. The West Bengal Assembly polls will be held to elect a total of 294 Members of Legislative Assembly (MLAs). As per the estimates of 2011 Census, Sitalkuchi has a  3,44,092-strong population. The Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) are 63.58 and 0.11 percent respectively of the total population. Sitalkuchi has an average literacy rate of 76 percent, higher than the national average of 70.34 percent. Male literacy is 77.03 percent and female literacy is 63.41 percent. Agriculture is the primary mode of living in the district, with paddy (rice) and jute among the largest produced crops. The constituency has witnessed a sensitive atmosphere in the past and often incidents resulting from the political rivalry between the TMC and BJP. Shortly after the Lok Sabha elections in 2019, the Trinamool office in Sitalkuchi area of the district was ransacked. “Since the results came in, BJP workers have either locked down our party offices or vandalised them or set them on fire,” Trinamool’s Sitalkuchi block president Abed Ali Miya had told reporters. BJP’s Nisith Pramanik had defeated Trinamool’s Paresh Adhikary on the Coochbehar seat. West Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh’s vehicle was attacked in 2018 in Sitalkuchi while on the way to a Rath Yatra in Mathabhanga, fuelling a blame game between the TMC and the saffron party.