Kolkata: TMC has thrown a shaky by nominating Madhuparna Thakur daughter of Rajya Sabha member Mamata Bala Thakur from Bagdah for the July 10 by polls in West Bengal. Two of these constituencies are the Bagdah and Ranaghat South seats where the Dalit Matua community resides in the region. In fact, BJP’s Shantanu Thakur who has won the Bongaon Lok seat twice, had defeated Madhuparna’s mother in the 2014 polls.
This article is specifically about Madhuparna, a college Politics student who wants to work for the betterment of the Matua community. The issue is that BJP had a noticeable lead over TMC in Bagdah in the recent past during the Lok Sabha polls. The BJP has not declared its candidates yet although its spokesperson, Shantanu Thakur has said nothing.
In the 2021 polls, BJP clinched Bagdah, Raiganj and Ranaghat South constituencies but all of them defected to TMCJoining the BJP in the process are Krishna Kalyani, Mukutmani Adhikari and Biswajit Das. These leaders demitted assembly before recent Lok Sabha elections; turned candidates for BJP in those elections had defeated them.
Though BJP had lost the 18 out of 2019 Lok Sabha in tally by obtaining only 12 out of it, they had retained these constituencies for twice, the minister Shantanu served as the Minister of State for Shipping. TMC re-nominated Kalyani and Adhikari for Raiganj and Ranaghat South, so that the party could make the much needed recoveries.
Many such as Matuas from the Dalit Namasudra community of east Pakistan came to West Bengal during the partition of India in 1947 and the war in 1971 for Bangladesh’s independence to avoid oppression. CAP in 2019 to help BJP was the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).
And in the wake of the bypolls, both these parties gear up to potentially alter the political map once again, aiming to consolidate support, achieving victory in these constituencies by fighting it out to mobilise the local issues and the community support.
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