West Bengal by-elections: TMC names candidates for bypolls to three Assembly seats, Left announces one

Kolkata: The Trinamool Congress on Thursday announced its candidate list for the bypolls to three Assembly seats in West Bengal, to be held on 25 November. The CPI(M)-led Left Front, which has entered into a seat-sharing deal with the Congress in 1:2 formula, announced its candidate for the Karimpur Assembly constituency in Nadia district. The Bengal Congress unit finalised the names of Chittaranjan Mondal and Dhitasree Roy for Kharagpur Sadar and Kaliaganj, and had sent it to party high command in New Delhi for the final nod, party sources said. [caption id=“attachment_2683700” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representative image. Reuters[/caption] The BJP is yet to announce its candidates. The constituencies of Kharagpur Sadar in West Midnapore district, Karimpur in Nadia and Kaliaganj in Uttar Dinajpur are held by the BJP, TMC and the Congress, respectively. “We have nominated Pradip Sarkar to Kharagpur Sadar, Tapan Deb Singha to Kaliaganj and Bimalendu Singha Roy to Karimpur. We are confident of winning all the three seats,” TMC secretary-general Partha Chatterjee said. Left Front chairman Biman Bose announced the name of CPI(M)’s Gholam Rabbi as the candidate for Karimpur seat. The bypoll to Kaliaganj seat was necessitated following the death of sitting Congress MLA Parmathanath Roy while Kharagpur Sadar fell vacant after BJP’s Dilip Ghosh was elected from Medinipur Lok Sabha constituency. Karimpur seat also fell vacant after TMC’s Mahua Moitra emerged victorious from Krishnnanagar Lok Sabha seat. The 25 November by-polls to these seats will be the first litmus test for the TMC and the BJP since the Lok Sabha elections in the state and will indicate in which way the political wind is blowing. In this year’s parliamentary polls, the saffron party bagged 18 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats in the state, four less than that of the ruling Trinamool Congress. The by-polls will be held in the backdrop of the BJP’s performance in the recent Maharashtra and Haryana assembly elections and in the shadow of the proposed implementation of NRC and tabling of the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill in Parliament. For the BJP, the challenge is to live up to its performance in the parliamentary polls, whereas the TMC will try to regain its lost political ground. The by-polls will also decide if the opposition Congress and the CPI(M), which have come together after three years, will remain relevant in the state politics or become redundant.