Bhagabanpur Assembly Election 2024

Bhagabanpur Assembly constituency covers four gram panchayats of Bhagabanpur I, seven gram panchayats of Bhagabanpur II and two gram panchayats of Patashpur II community development blocks. It is one of the seven Assembly segments that make up the Kanthi Lok Sabha seat.

Established in 1957, Bhagabanpur has gone to the Assembly polls 16 times. In its first outing as a dual-member seat in 1957, the Congress and the Praja Socialist Party shared the honours, and since 1962, the Congress has won five times, the CPI(M) and the Trinamool Congress four times each, with the Janata Party and the BJP winning once each.

Ardhendu Maity of the Trinamool Congress, who had won the seat in 2001 and 2006, completed a hat-trick in 2011 by defeating the Samajwadi Party’s Ranjit Manna by 8,997 votes. He held the seat with a bigger margin of 31,943 votes in 2016, defeating Hemangshu Shekhar Mahapatra of the Congress, before suffering a surprise defeat in 2021 when BJP candidate Rabindranath Maity beat him by 27,549 votes.

The BJP’s rise here has been dramatic. Its vote share in Bhagabanpur climbed from 2.59 per cent in 2011 to 3.80 per cent in 2016, and then shot up by 50.76 percentage points to 54.56 per cent in 2021, when it unseated the Trinamool Congress.

In Lok Sabha elections, the Trinamool Congress led the field in the Bhagabanpur Assembly segment in 2009, 2014 and 2019, before the BJP edged ahead in 2024. Trinamool’s lead over the CPI(M) was 12,813 votes in 2009 and 36,426 votes in 2014, and it led the BJP by 37,391 votes in 2019, but in 2024 the BJP established a slender lead of 585 votes over Trinamool.

Bhagabanpur had 198,952 registered voters in 2011, 232,640 in 2016, 245,077 in 2019, 254,184 in 2021 and 265,460 in 2024. Scheduled Castes make up 15.52 per cent of the voters and Muslims 7.10 per cent. The constituency is overwhelmingly rural, with only about 1.46 per cent of its voters living in urban pockets.

Voter turnout in Bhagabanpur has been consistently high, though with some fluctuations. It stood at 92.31 per cent in 2011, 88.26 per cent in 2016, 86.83 per cent in 2019, 87.86 per cent in 2021 and 84.65 per cent in 2024.

Bhagabanpur lies on the flat alluvial plains of coastal Purba Medinipur, between the Kangsabati-Haldi river system to the west and south and the Rasulpur and other smaller rivers and creeks that drain towards the Bay of Bengal. The terrain is low-lying and gently undulating, with a landscape of paddy fields, ponds, canals and homestead gardens typical of the coastal belt.

The local economy is driven mainly by agriculture and allied activities. Aman and Boro paddy are the main crops, alongside jute, potatoes, pulses and oilseeds. Betelvine and cashew cultivation in parts of Purba Medinipur also support livelihoods in Bhagabanpur.

Bhagabanpur lies about 31 km south of the district headquarters, Tamluk, by road. It is roughly 40 km from the subdivision headquarters at Egra, about 45-50 km from Contai (Kanthi), and around 80-90 km from Kolkata, the state capital.

Road connectivity is provided by district and state roads that link Bhagabanpur to Tamluk, Contai, Egra and other small market towns. The nearest railway access is through stations such as Tamluk and Panskura on the South Eastern Railway network, about 25-35 km away, from where passengers travel towards Howrah, Kharagpur and other parts of the state.

Nearby towns and cities include Tamluk to the north, Contai and Egra to the south and south-east, and Haldia further south-west along the Haldi River, with Kharagpur and Medinipur town lying further. Kolkata, about 85 km away, remains the main urban centre for higher education, specialised healthcare and administrative work.

Bhagabanpur goes into the 2026 Assembly elections on the cusp of a close and intriguing contest between the BJP and the Trinamool Congress. To its credit, the Trinamool Congress closed the gap by 2024 and trailed the BJP by only a narrow margin in the Lok Sabha polls in this segment. The BJP cannot expect much indirect help from the Left Front-Congress alliance, which has gradually faded and is now almost invisible in Bhagabanpur.

(Ajay Jha)