Balrampur constituency, which has participated in 16 Assembly elections since its inception in 1957, has an interesting past. It was a Scheduled Tribe-reserved constituency until the Delimitation Commission reclassified it as a general category seat with effect from the 2011 Assembly polls. An overwhelmingly rural constituency with a sizeable Tribal population, Balrampur is one of the seven segments under the Purulia Lok Sabha seat and is made up of the entire Balrampur community development block, along with six gram panchayats of Purulia I and three gram panchayats of Arsa blocks.
The CPI(M) has won the maximum eight terms here, including seven consecutive wins between 1977 and 2006. The now-defunct Lok Sewak Sangh, a Purulia-based local party, won the first four Assembly elections between 1957 and 1969. The Trinamool Congress has emerged victorious twice, while the Congress party and the BJP have held the seat once each.
The Trinamool Congress halted the long victory run of the CPI(M) in its third attempt after facing two back-to-back defeats by big margins at the hands of the CPI(M) in 2001 and 2006. In 2011, Santiram Mahato opened the Trinamool’s account by defeating the CPI(M)’s Manindra Gope by 10,528 votes, and he retained the seat by a near identical margin of 10,204 votes in 2016 when he beat the Congress party’s Jagdish Mahato. Santiram Mahato, who had served as a junior minister in the Mamata Banerjee government for a decade, then suffered a shocking defeat by a wafer-thin margin as Baneswar Mahato of the BJP defeated him by 423 votes in 2021.
The BJP’s growth in Balrampur has been astonishing. From polling 2.48 per cent and 5.12 per cent votes in 2011 and 2016, its vote share surged to 45.22 per cent in 2021, when it went on to win the seat. The platform for the BJP’s victory was, in a way, laid in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, when the party came from behind after polling 2.11 per cent votes in 2009 and 5.13 per cent in 2014 to poll 54.10 per cent votes in 2019 and establish a lead of 35,469 votes over the Trinamool Congress in the Balrampur Assembly segment. The Trinamool Congress succeeded in wresting the lead from the BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls by a small margin of 1,150 votes.
The topsy-turvy performance of the Trinamool Congress in the Balrampur segment was evident even earlier as it trailed the Congress party by 8,828 votes in 2009 and then led the Congress by 25,171 votes in 2014, before its hide-and-seek game with the BJP began in the 2019 general elections.
Balrampur had 247,856 voters in the draft roll for the 2026 Assembly elections, registering a nominal decline from 250,680 registered voters in 2024. Earlier, the figure stood at 238,113 in 2021, 224,133 in 2019, 229,048 in 2016, and 216,123 in 2011. The Scheduled Tribes form the largest group with 20.70 per cent of the voters, while the Scheduled Castes account for 14.53 per cent of the electorate. Muslims have a negligible presence in this constituency. Around 90.40 per cent of Balrampur’s voters live in villages, giving it a predominantly rural outlook, while only 9.60 per cent live in urban pockets. The turnout has remained quite high with 84.60 per cent in 2011, 83.47 per cent in 2016, 83.55 per cent in 2019, and 87.10 per cent in 2021.
Historically, Balarampur served as the capital of the Barabhum zamindari in the colonial period. The wider Purulia region traces its roots back to the ancient Vajra-bhumi mentioned in the Jaina Bhagavati-Sutra. The area later became part of the Jungle Mahals and then Manbhum district under British rule before being integrated into West Bengal after the States Reorganisation and language agitations in the 1950s. This legacy has given the region a distinct political culture with strong left-wing and peasant-movement traditions.
Balrampur lies in the westernmost part of West Bengal on the Chota Nagpur Plateau fringe, with an undulating terrain of low hills, lateritic uplands and narrow valleys. Several rivers and streams from the Kangsabati, Subarnarekha and Damodar systems drain the district, creating small patches of fertile land amidst otherwise dry tracts, and supporting paddy, maize and other crops as well as forest-based livelihoods.
The local economy revolves around agriculture, forest produce and small-scale trade, with many residents also depending on seasonal migration to industrial and mining belts in Jharkhand and other states for work. Traditional cultural forms of Purulia, including variants of Chhau dance and folk festivals, are part of the broader socio-cultural landscape around Balrampur and nearby blocks.
Balrampur is located on important road links that connect it to Purulia town, other parts of the district and neighbouring Jharkhand. Purulia, the district headquarters, is roughly 30 km away by road, while Kolkata, the state capital, is about 280 km from Balrampur. Nearby towns within Purulia and across the border include Jhalda, Bagmundi and Barabazar on the West Bengal side and towns such as Ranchi and Jamshedpur in Jharkhand and Rourkela in Odisha within a wider 150 to 250 km belt, linked by road and railway corridors that pass through or near the subdivision.
The records give the Trinamool Congress an edge as it has led in four of the last seven major elections held in Balrampur, compared to two for the BJP and one for the Congress party. However, history does not win elections, and the present is anything but rosy for the Trinamool Congress, as it has led in only one of the last three elections and trailed the BJP by a narrow margin in 2024.
This places Balrampur in a different category of seats, which stand on the razor’s edge and can tilt either way, depending on factors such as outreach to the ST and SC communities and the ability to weave a compelling local narrative. The Congress-Left Front alliance has become irrelevant here after polling less than five per cent of votes in the last two elections. It is unlikely to have any impact on the outcome, setting the stage for a direct Trinamool versus BJP contest which promises to be close, intriguing and a pollster’s nightmare to predict.
(Ajay Jha)
