Quazi, who lost the seat by a narrow margin of 167 votes in 2006, returned in 2011 when he defeated his 2006 conqueror, Mohammed Selim Gayen of the CPI(M), by 22,960 votes. He went on to retain the seat in 2016 by 22,245 votes against Amir Ali of the Trinamool Congress. He later crossed over to the Trinamool Congress and contested the 2021 election as that party’s candidate, defeating the BJP’s Sukalyan Baidya by 56,444 votes.
Voting trends in the Baduria Assembly segment during the Lok Sabha elections also underline the Trinamool Congress’s growing grip. The party led here in three general elections since 2009, when it was ahead of the CPI by 13,785 votes. The CPI briefly reversed the trend in 2014, leading the Trinamool Congress by 3,314 votes, but the Trinamool returned strongly, opening up a margin of 39,906 votes over the BJP in 2019 and stretching it further to 50,562 votes against the BJP in 2024.
Baduria is made up of the entire Baduria municipality and 12 gram panchayats of the Baduria community development block. It forms one of the segments under the Basirhat Lok Sabha seat. Baduria had 251,768 registered voters in 2024, up from 243,747 in 2021, 235,040 in 2019, 223,537 in 2016 and 188,461 in 2011. Muslims constitute 55.90 per cent of voters while Scheduled Castes account for 16.16 per cent. It is overwhelmingly a rural seat, with 80.07 per cent of voters living in villages compared to 19.93 per cent in urban pockets. The voter turnout has remained consistently high in Assembly elections, at 89.74 per cent in 2011, 87.81 per cent in 2016 and 87.48 per cent in 2021, dipping slightly during Lok Sabha polls when it stood at 85.15 per cent in 2019 and 84.79 per cent in 2024.
Baduria town is one of the older municipalities of North 24 Parganas, located in the Basirhat subdivision on the bank of the Ichamati River. Over time, it has grown as a local trading and agricultural hub in the lower Ganges delta, with zamindar houses, old temples and a Rajbari reflecting a long-settled landscape rather than a newly urbanised centre. The constituency lies in the Ichamati-Raimangal plain of the lower Ganges delta on flat alluvial land criss-crossed by rivers, creeks and khals. Its economy is rooted in agriculture and small trade, with rice mills, jute and handloom work and a growing service sector tying its villages to the municipal town.
Baduria is connected by road to Kolkata via Barasat and Habra, with the driving distance to the state capital around 55 to 60 km and onward links by local roads to Basirhat, Taki and Bongaon. Residents depend on nearby suburban rail stations on the Sealdah-Bangaon and Sealdah-Hasnabad sections to reach Habra, Barasat and Kolkata, while rural roads and bus routes connect the gram panchayats to Baduria town. Baduria sits in a densely settled belt of North 24 Parganas, with Barasat, the district headquarters, about 35 to 40 km away, Basirhat, the subdivisional town about 25 to 30 km away, Habra about 25 to 30 km away, Bongaon about 45 to 50 km away and Taki on the Ichamati about 35 to 40 km away. Baduria is about 12 km from the Bangladesh border, with towns across the border lying further east beyond the immediate Baduria-Taki stretch of the Ichamati.
The Trinamool Congress enters the 2026 Assembly election in Baduria comfortably placed to retain the seat, with what currently appears to be a one-sided contest. The BJP, perceived as a Hindu nationalist party, enters a Muslim majority seat like Baduria with an obvious handicap, even though it has grown in the wider region and improved its performance in parliamentary polls. The Congress and the Left Front, which dominated electoral politics in Baduria for decades before they came together ahead of the 2021 elections, have faded fast. The BJP’s only realistic hope is a significant revival of the Left Front-Congress alliance that vertically splits the Trinamool’s Muslim vote base while the BJP strengthens its appeal among the nearly 46 per cent non-Muslim voters. Otherwise, Baduria remains a seat for the Trinamool Congress to lose in the 2026 Assembly elections.
(Ajay Jha)
