Basirhat Dakshin Assembly constituency, which covers Basirhat town, is located in the North 24 Parganas district and was created in 2011. It is a general category seat and one of the seven segments that form the Basirhat Lok Sabha constituency. It consists of the Basirhat municipality, Basirhat I community development block and Taki municipality, which together give it a mixed semi-urban character.
Earlier, this area formed part of the unified Basirhat Assembly constituency that existed from 1951 to 2006. The old seat was split into Basirhat Uttar and Basirhat Dakshin ahead of the 2011 elections, following the recommendations of the Delimitation Commission. Since its inception, Basirhat Dakshin has gone to the polls four times, including a by-election in 2014, and the results suggest that voters are still testing different parties rather than settling on one clear choice.
The CPI(M) won the first election in 2011, when its candidate Narayan Mukherjee defeated Narayan Goswami of the Trinamool Congress by 12,410 votes. Mukherjee’s death led to the 2014 bypoll, in which the BJP, which had finished fourth in 2011, produced a surprise result. Its candidate, Samik Bhattacharya, edged past Trinamool nominee Dipendu Biswas, a national-level footballer, by 1,586 votes. The tables turned in 2016, when Dipendu Biswas defeated Samik Bhattacharya by 24,058 votes, giving the Trinamool Congress its first win here. Biswas later joined the BJP, and the Trinamool Congress went into the 2021 election with Saptarshi Banerjee as its candidate. Banerjee defeated the BJP’s Tarak Nath Ghosh by 24,468 votes, underlining Trinamool’s current advantage and the BJP’s role as the main challenger.
Lok Sabha voting figures from the Basirhat Dakshin Assembly segment show a similar pattern. In 2009, the Trinamool Congress led the CPI by 20,326 votes. The trend changed in 2014, when the BJP moved to the top and opened a lead of 30,223 votes over the Trinamool Congress in this segment. Since then, Trinamool has managed to reclaim the lead and has stayed ahead of the BJP by 14,900 votes in 2019 and 15,023 votes in 2024, with the gap remaining almost steady across the last two parliamentary contests.
Basirhat Dakshin had 280,543 registered voters in 2024, up from 275,934 in 2021, 264,431 in 2019, 249,807 in 2016 and 213,441 in 2011. Muslims form about 40.70 per cent of the electorate, while Scheduled Castes account for 17.50 per cent, which makes this a seat where minority and Scheduled Caste votes carry considerable weight. The constituency is almost evenly split in terms of settlement pattern, with 44.91 per cent rural voters and 55.09 per cent urban voters on its rolls. Voter turnout has been high and stable, recorded at 87.20 per cent in 2011, 86.81 per cent in 2016, 84.80 per cent in 2019, 85.52 per cent in 2021 and 84.05 per cent in 2024.
Basirhat town, the core of the constituency, is an old municipal centre and the headquarters of the Basirhat subdivision. It stands on the banks of the Ichhamati River, close to the border with Bangladesh, and serves as an administrative, commercial and transport hub for the surrounding rural belt. Historically, Basirhat grew as a trading post under the British, with salt and indigo as major items of commerce, and its markets still draw people from neighbouring villages and border areas.
The Ichhamati River influences both the geography and everyday life in Basirhat Dakshin. The river and its channels bring fertile alluvial soil, which supports crops and brick kilns along the banks, but siltation, erosion and flooding have long posed problems. The stretch between Basirhat and Taki doubles as a border river, with parts of Satkhira district on the opposite bank in Bangladesh. This has made Basirhat a typical borderland, with cross river movement, legal and illegal migration for work and trade, and a local economy that depends on agriculture, small scale industries, brick fields, fishing, boat services and tourism in the riverine and Sundarbans fringe areas.
Basirhat is connected to Kolkata by road and rail. The town lies roughly 60 to 70 km north east of Kolkata by road, depending on the route taken through Barasat and the outer suburbs. It is linked by rail to Barasat and onward to Sealdah through the Sealdah-Hasnabad section of the Kolkata Suburban Railway, providing a daily commuting link for workers, traders and students. The road network ties Basirhat Dakshin to neighbouring towns such as Taki along the Ichhamati, as well as to other parts of North 24 Parganas and border check points, which adds to its importance in the northern part of the district.
The electoral picture in Basirhat Dakshin suggests that the BJP is firmly in the race to upset the Trinamool Congress, especially given its Lok Sabha surge in 2014 and its position as the main challenger in 2019 and 2024. The party’s best chance lies in a limited revival of the almost defunct Left Front-Congress alliance, enough to cut into the Trinamool Congress’s Muslim vote bank and make the contest three-cornered. At the same time, it will seek to consolidate Hindu voters behind it, drawing on national and local issues. If these shifts take place, Basirhat Dakshin could tilt towards the BJP. If they do not, the Trinamool Congress will retain the upper hand, though not by the kind of margins seen in its safest seats. Either way, the constituency is set for a close and intriguing contest in the 2026 Assembly elections.
(Ajay Jha)
