The constituency was established in 1962 and has gone to the polls 16 times, including the 2024 by-election. The Forward Bloc has won the seat nine times, while the Congress and the Trinamool Congress have won it three times each, and the BJP once. In 2011, Upendranath Biswas, a former IPS officer who probed the Fodder Scam in neighbouring Bihar, won the seat for the Trinamool Congress by defeating Mrinalkanti Sikdar of the Forward Bloc by 20,956 votes. In 2016, Dulal Chandra Bar of the Congress, who had first won the seat for the Trinamool in 2006, defeated sitting Trinamool MLA Biswas by 12,236 votes. In 2021, Biswajit Das, who had defected from the Trinamool, won the seat for the BJP by defeating Paritosh Kumar Saha of the Trinamool Congress by 9,792 votes. He later resigned after returning to the Trinamool, triggering a by-election in 2024 in which the party denied him a ticket and fielded Madhupurna Thakur, who defeated BJP’s Binay Kumar Biswas by 33,455 votes.
Lok Sabha election trends in the Bagdah Assembly segment capture the shift from Left to Trinamool and then to a BJP-Trinamool contest. In 2009, the Trinamool Congress led the CPI(M) by 13,191 votes here. In 2014, its lead over the CPI(M) widened to 22,873 votes. By 2019, the BJP had emerged as the main challenger and led the Trinamool Congress by 24,457 votes in this segment, and in 2024, it again led the Trinamool by 20,514 votes.
Bagdah Assembly constituency had 248,918 voters on the draft electoral roll following the 2025 Special Intensive Revision, as reflected in the SIR 2026 draft, marking a sharp decline of 36,591 voters from 285,509 in 2024. Earlier, the electorate stood at 277,464 in 2021, 267,867 in 2019, 257,998 in 2016 and 202,808 in 2011. Scheduled Castes form 53.54 per cent of the voters, Scheduled Tribes 4.91 per cent, while Muslims have only a minuscule presence despite the constituency’s proximity to the Bangladesh border. Bagdah is entirely rural, with 100 per cent rural voters and no urban pockets. Voter turnout has been robust with 85.60 per cent in 2011, 79.67 per cent in 2016, 77.43 per cent in 2019 and 77.20 per cent in 2021.
The low Muslim share here, despite the border location, is attributed locally to the fenced, closely guarded India-Bangladesh frontier manned by the Border Security Force, combined with the fact that a large share of Bagdah’s population comprises displaced Scheduled Caste Hindus who migrated from the then East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and settled in this belt in 1947. This has created an environment in which undocumented Muslim migrants are seen as more vulnerable and less likely to settle, reinforcing Bagdah’s identity as a core Matua-SC belt.
Bagdah lies in the northern part of North 24 Parganas, close to the international border. It is about 70 to 75 km north of the district headquarters at Barasat and functions as the block headquarters. The nearest major town is Bangaon, a key border and rail town on the Sealdah-Bangaon line. Kolkata, the state capital, is roughly 100 to 105 km away by road from Bagdah. The constituency’s villages lie just a few kilometres west of the fenced Bangladesh border, with several local roads running towards border posts and markets near the frontier.
Topographically, Bagdah forms part of the lower Ganga-Brahmaputra deltaic plain, with flat alluvial terrain and fertile soils supporting intensive agriculture. Numerous small rivers and channels, including distributaries and khals linked to the Ichamati system and other local drainage, criss-cross the landscape and cause seasonal waterlogging during heavy monsoon spells. Agriculture is the backbone of the local economy, with paddy as the dominant crop, supplemented by jute, vegetables and oilseeds. Small-scale trading, border-linked petty commerce, remittances and public-sector or informal jobs in nearby towns such as Bangaon and Barasat also contribute to household incomes. Basic infrastructure like roads, schools, health centres and electrification has expanded over the past two decades, but quality and access still vary across villages, and many residents depend on Bangaon, Barasat and Kolkata for higher education, specialised healthcare and formal employment.
The SIR has generated confusion and anxiety in Bagdah. Despite the constituency’s small Muslim population, as many as 36,591 names have been removed from the rolls, officially on grounds such as death, duplication and out-migration, but with no clear community or caste-wise breakup in the public domain. This lack of clarity has left all political parties guessing about which social groups have been hit the most. The BJP had won the Assembly seat in 2021 and led the Trinamool Congress in the 2019 and 2024 Lok Sabha elections from this segment by comfortable margins, which makes it tempting for its leaders to assume that a large share of the deletions might be from the Trinamool’s support base.
If that assumption were accurate, the 2026 Assembly election could, on paper, tilt Bagdah even more decisively towards the BJP, turning its present edge into overwhelming favourite status. However, without credible data on the profile of deleted voters, such projections remain speculative, and all parties will watch fresh enrolment and booth-level trends closely through the campaign. The once dominant Left Front and the Congress, now reduced to less than four per cent of the vote even as allies, are unlikely to influence the outcome in any significant way and look set to remain marginal players in Bagdah in 2026.
(Ajay Jha)
