Shibpur Assembly Election 2024

Shibpur, a general category Assembly constituency, was established in 1967 and now covers 10 wards, numbers 8, 9, 21, 22, 23, 43, 47, 48, 49 and 50, of the Howrah Municipal Corporation. It is one of the seven segments under the Howrah Lok Sabha seat.

Shibpur has witnessed 14 Assembly elections since its inception. In the early decades, the seat often shifted between the Forward Bloc and the Congress party, with the Forward Bloc winning five times and the Congress and the Trinamool Congress four times each, while the CPI(M) has held it once.

Jatu Lahiri has represented this seat five times, twice for the Congress and thrice for the Trinamool Congress. Having won the seat twice on the Congress ticket in 1991 and 1996, he joined the Trinamool Congress when Mamata Banerjee broke away from the parent party. Lahiri helped the Trinamool open its account here in the 2001 elections. He lost in 2006 before bouncing back to win the seat twice more for the Trinamool Congress.

In 2011, Lahiri defeated his 2006 conqueror, Dr Jagannath Bhattacharya of the Forward Bloc, by 46,404 votes. He prevailed over Bhattacharya again in 2016, though with a reduced margin of 27,014 votes. Lahiri’s long innings ended in 2021 when the party denied him a ticket after internal surveys suggested his popularity had declined. The Trinamool fielded former Indian cricketer Manoj Tiwary, who defeated Rathin Chakrabarty of the BJP by 32,603 votes.

The Trinamool Congress’s dominance is also reflected in the Lok Sabha polling in the Shibpur Assembly segment. It led the CPI(M) by 28,416 votes in 2009 and 38,207 votes in 2014. The BJP then emerged from the margins to replace the Left as the principal challenger, with the Trinamool leading the BJP by 8,711 votes in 2019 and 14,206 votes in 2024.

After the 2025 Special Intensive Revision, Shibpur Assembly constituency had 205,380 voters on the draft roll, a sharp decline of 32,651 from 238,061 in 2024. This is striking because Shibpur has negligible Muslim voters, and those disfranchised here are clearly not illegal Bangladeshi immigrants. Earlier, the number of registered voters stood at 233,676 in 2021, 221,722 in 2019, 216,988 in 2016 and 197,987 in 2011. Muslims and Scheduled Tribes have negligible presence in this constituency, while Scheduled Castes account for 3.92 per cent of the voters. Despite being a purely urban seat, turnout has remained robust. It was 82.29 per cent in 2011, 78.34 per cent in 2016, 77.39 per cent in 2019, 78.02 per cent in 2021 and 74.14 per cent in 2024.

Shibpur’s growth as an urban centre is closely linked to the rise of Howrah as Kolkata’s twin city across the Hooghly and to its early colonial institutions. The area is home to the Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Garden, established in 1787 as the Calcutta Botanic Garden, which has become one of the world’s most important botanical gardens and played a key role in introducing commercially important plants to India. Shibpur is also home to the Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, which traces its origins to the 19th-century Bengal Engineering College and remains one of India’s oldest engineering institutions.

The neighbourhood stands on the west bank of the Hooghly, opposite central Kolkata, and is fully urban in character. Its built-up area blends institutional campuses, residential pockets, markets and small industries typical of the Howrah belt.

The local economy is mixed, driven by education, services, trade and small manufacturing. Many residents work in schools, colleges, government offices, transport and retail, while others commute into central Kolkata and other parts of Howrah for employment. The Botanic Garden, IIEST campus and the riverfront add a modest tourism and recreation dimension to the local economy.

Shibpur is well connected by road and public transport to Kolkata and the wider metropolitan area. It lies just across Vidyasagar Setu from central Kolkata, with distances of about 7 to 8 km to the city centre. Buses link Shibpur and Park Street in around 15 to 20 minutes, while taxis cover the stretch in roughly 10 to 15 minutes.

Within the Howrah district, Shibpur is part of the continuous urban spread of Howrah city. Other towns and urban pockets in Howrah district, such as Santragachi, Liluah, Bally and Uttarpara across the river in Hooghly, fall within a 5 to 20 km belt from Shibpur, linked by road and rail bridges. Further out, towns in the Hooghly district along the river, and urban stretches in North and South 24 Parganas that are part of the Kolkata Metropolitan Area, remain within commuting distance by bus, suburban train and metro links.

If the Shibpur draft roll remains largely unchanged, it is bound to affect the election calculus, especially since the Election Commission does not publish community or caste-wise voter data. The BJP has grown significantly over the past three elections. Many in the political class believe that without a popular cricketer as its candidate, the 2021 Assembly election could have been a much closer affair, a view that finds some reflection in the 2019 and 2024 Lok Sabha voting trends. The gap between the Trinamool Congress and the BJP was around eight percentage points in 2024, which is within reach for a party whose vote share rose by nearly 25 percentage points between the 2016 and 2021 Assembly polls. While the Trinamool, with its unbroken record of winning or leading in all seven contests since 2009, goes into 2026 with an edge, the BJP’s chances of causing an upset cannot be ruled out in light of the large decline in voters, which is likely to hurt the Trinamool more and make Shibpur a constituency worth watching closely.

(Ajay Jha)