Be it Left or TMC or BJP, violence stays constant in Dinhata’s politics
Telegraph | 21 April 2026
The fear of political violence “is a lingering feeling” in Cooch Behar’s Dinhata, as one local resident said. Located near the India-Bangladesh border around 728 km north of Kolkata, Dinhata’s political character has been shaped by geography, migration and contested control over land.
For decades, the constituency was the stronghold of Forward Bloc patriarch Kamal Guha. Then, Dinhata was wracked by intra-Left violence.
In 2008, less than a year after police shot protesters opposing land acquisition for a chemical hub in Nandigram, killing 14 villagers and sparking protests that Mamata Banerjee would weaponise in 2011 to unseat the Left, Dinhata drew national attention when police shot dead five Forward Bloc supporters.
The clash was not between rival parties but within the erstwhile ruling Left Front — primarily between the Forward Bloc and the CPM-led government.
By 2011 Kamal Guha’s son, Udayan Guha, emerged as the central political figure in Dinhata. He won the 2011 Assembly election as a Left leader and the 2016 and 2021 elections as a Trinamool candidate, becoming a key face of the ruling party as north Bengal development minister.
“Dinhata — a marginal borderland constituency — has been a hot battleground since the 1960s. Amid the refugee rehabilitation movement, the Left consolidated its position,” said Jaydip Sarkar, a college teacher in Dinhata.
The next major phase of violence emerged in 2018, thanks to intra-Trinamool factionalism. Competing groups, often called locally as the “yuva” and the “mother” referring to TMC’s youth brigade and senior leaders, vied for dominance.
“In the 2018 panchayat polls, the situation was violent,” said a local resident who requested anonymity. “Booth jamming was rampant and even candidates were stopped on the road. Nisith Pramanik was the TMC ‘yuva’ leader; Rabindranath Ghosh, Udayan Guha, Jalil Ahmed were the ‘mother’ leaders,” he said.
In 2018, the Trinamool suspended Pramanik. He joined the BJP soon after.
Since then, the BJP has expanded significantly in the region, particularly during the 2019 and 2021 Assembly elections, capitalising on local grievances related to migration, alleged infiltration and economic stagnation.
Pramanik was at the centre of this shift. In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, he contested from Cooch Behar, won the seat, and went on to become a Union minister.
His emergence marked a transition in Dinhata’s political landscape, from factional rivalries within a dominant party to direct contest between two major political forces.
The area became increasingly volatile with bombs flying in political clashes.
“TMC leaders were attacked, workers had to leave home,” said a Dinhata resident. “In 2021, Nisith and Udayan contested the Assembly polls against each other. Nisith won by 57 votes. Udayan is also not a leader who gives up.”
The aftermath of the slim victory saw further violence. During the post-poll unrest that affected several parts of Bengal, Guha was attacked and suffered a fractured hand, which he blamed on the BJP.
The contest continued in the by-election that followed after Pramanik resigned from the Assembly to retain his Lok Sabha seat and assume office as a Union minister. In that election, Guha regained the seat with a margin of 1.6 lakh votes.
In 2024, Pramanik lost the Lok Sabha election from Cooch Behar.
The BJP leader has now shifted his base to nearby Mathabhanga, leaving his associate Ajay Rai to contest from Dinhata against Guha.
"Some say that tigers don't touch dead prey,” Pramanik told The Telegraph Online when asked about his decision to move away. “I don't think Dinhata is a very tough place to fight from. My brother is enough to defeat the candidate there."
He framed the move as strategic expansion: "the whole of Cooch Behar is my constituency.”
Guha ribbed his erstwhile direct opponent,
"He has already left the field," the Trinamool’s Dinhata candidate told The Telegraph Online with a dismissive wave of his hand. "There is nothing to say about him."
He added: "When violence happened, the BJP candidate who was fighting the election from this place had the motive to do this kind of thing. This time, he is not there; naturally, the violence is also not there."
That may be deceptive. In the 2023 panchayat elections, at least one person was killed in firing during clashes between rival factions.
Last year as well, Dinhata saw a series of violent episodes. In March, a group of alleged Trinamool supporters attacked the car of Nikhil Ranjan Dey, the BJP MLA of Cooch Behar Dakshin, as he left the Dinhata court premises. Dey, who had been named in an earlier political violence case, managed to escape.
Days later, clashes in the town square left several people injured.
In August 2025, in the Salmara area, miscreants allegedly vandalised the homes of BJP workers. An eight-month pregnant woman was reportedly kicked and injured.
Such incidents have continued to shape public perception in the constituency.
“In politics, the person who has the most people’s support will dominate,” Guha said. “Once the Left had the most power; now they are nowhere. People have stopped supporting them. This is very natural.”
Pramanik blamed the Trinamool.
“Till the time Udhayan Guha is in Dinhata, violence is inevitable,” he said. “If you look closely, [in] the first [political] murder in Dinhata, Ratan Burman, the first name that came up was Udhayan Guha.”
The overt street confrontations of previous years have, for the moment, given way to a more restrained but equally charged contest of rhetoric.