Caption: A wall graffiti seeking votes for Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury in Berhampore, on Sunday. Partha Paul
The Congress on Sunday released its first list of 284 candidates for the West Bengal Assembly elections, and there were no surprises. The party has fielded veteran leader and five-time MP Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury from Baharampur Assembly seat in Murshidabad district.
Following his defeat in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the former Union minister will be returning to the state electoral politics after three decades – Adhir last won the Assembly elections from Nabagram in 1996, and quit as an MLA in 1999 to move to Delhi.
The return of Adhir, who till last Lok Sabha polls in 2024 served as the West Bengal Congress unit president, to the state electoral politics was almost certain. Graffiti seeking votes for Adhir with Congress’ hand symbol had appeared on the walls in Berhampore soon after the election dates were announced.
“I am quite experienced in parliamentary politics, and Berhampore is familiar territory for me. I am not an outsider here,” Chowdhury had recently told mediapersons.
In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, he had lost to former cricketer Yusuf Pathan, who was fielded by the TMC, from Baharampur parliamentary constituency. Baharampur Assembly segment is a part of the Baharampur parliamentary constituency.
Chowdhury now faces a high-stakes three-way battle as he is pitted against incumbent BJP MLA Subrata Moitra (Kanchan) and TMC’s Naru Gopal Mukherjee, the chairperson of Berhampore Municipality.
The party has also fielded Mausam Noor, the niece of veteran Ghani Khan Choudhury. Noor will be contesting from Malatipur in her home turf of Malda district. She recently returned to the Congress after spending seven years in TMC, where she was a Rajya Sabha member.
The party has also fielded Sushmita Biswas from Dum Dum, Suman Roychowdhury (Maniktala), Shyamal Mandal (Jadavpur), and Manas Sinha Roy (Tollygunge).
Other candidates include Madhap Rai from Darjeeling, Abdul Hannan (Sujapur), Gautam Bhattacharya, who has been fielded in the TMC stronghold of Diamond Harbour, Souvik Mukherjee from Asansol Dakshin, and Prasenjit Puitandi from Asansol Uttar.
The announcement of candidates came a day after top Congress leaders held detailed deliberations during the meeting of the Central Election Committee (CEC) in New Delhi. Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and former party chief Rahul Gandhi, along with AICC general secretary (Organisation) K C Venugopal and leaders from West Bengal, including Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, had attended the meeting. After the meeting, Congress in-charge for West Bengal, Ghulam Ahmed Mir, said the party had received 2,500 applications for the 294 Assembly seats.
Unlike the past few elections when it had fought in alliance with the Left Front, the Congress this time said that it will be contesting all the 294 Assembly seats in West Bengal.
The names of the remaining 10 candidates will be announced soon, party sources said.
“We will contest all 294 Assembly seats in West Bengal, leaving none vacant. This was the wish of our workers and rank and file in the state since the beginning,” Mir said.
The move marks a formal departure from its 2021 alliance with the Left Front, when it had contested 91 Assembly seats but failed to win a seat.