Budge Budge is a municipal town in the South 24 Parganas district of West Bengal and a general category Assembly constituency that long served as a stronghold of the Indian Marxists before Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress took it over. It forms part of the Kolkata Metropolitan Area and is situated on the left bank of the Hooghly River.
There is a popular anecdote about how Budge Budge acquired its name, linked to the sound of early visitors trudging through the marshy land with heavy boots, though its formal history is more firmly anchored in its role as a riverside settlement and industrial town. Over time, the town has gradually distanced itself from the Left Front and embraced the Trinamool Congress as its preferred political party.
The Budge Budge Assembly constituency, essentially an urban seat, was created in 1951. It comprises Budge Budge and Pujali municipalities, the Budge Budge I community development block and four gram panchayats of the Budge Budge II block. It is one of the seven Assembly segments of the Diamond Harbour Lok Sabha constituency.
The seat has taken part in all 17 Assembly elections held in West Bengal so far. Out of the 11 elections between 1952 and 1991, the Left parties won 10 times, with the Congress party briefly interrupting their run in 1962. The unified Communist Party of India won the inaugural elections in 1952 and 1957, while the CPI(M) captured the seat eight times in a row between 1967 and 1991. The Congress broke this chain with a second win in 1996, before the Trinamool Congress stepped in and has won five consecutive terms since 2001.
Kshitij Bhushan Roy Burman of the CPI(M) won Budge Budge seven times in a row, while Ashok Kumar Deb has already won six consecutive terms. Deb first entered the Assembly in 1996 as a candidate for Congress. After the split in the Congress in 1998 and the formation of the Trinamool Congress by Mamata Banerjee, he moved to Trinamool and has since won all five elections from 2001 onwards for the party. His first victory in 1996 came when he defeated CPI(M)’s sitting MLA Dipak Mukherjee by 11,361 votes. He doubled his margin in 2001, the first election contested by the Trinamool Congress here, beating CPI(M)’s Kali Bhandari by 22,773 votes. His margin went up further to 25,109 votes in 2006 against Ratan Bagchi of the CPI(M). With the anti-Left wave sweeping West Bengal in 2011, Deb defeated CPI(M)’s Hrishikesh Podder by 46,489 votes. The margin dropped sharply to 7,159 votes in 2016 when he took on Sheikh Mujibar Rahaman of the Congress party, but surged again in 2021 to 44,714 votes against the BJP’s Tarun Kumar Adak.
The Trinamool Congress has replicated this dominance in the Lok Sabha elections in the Budge Budge Assembly segment. It has led here in all four parliamentary polls since 2009. In 2009, Trinamool led the CPI(M) by 32,758 votes, and in 2014 its lead was 4,575 votes. The BJP then replaced the CPI(M) as the main challenger, but Trinamool’s leads grew sharply, reaching 56,557 votes in 2019 and 117,838 votes in 2024 from this segment.
Budge Budge is one of the oldest municipalities in West Bengal, having been constituted in 1900. Its location along the Hooghly attracted the British, who set up jute mills, oil depots and related facilities, turning it into an industrial town tied closely to the Kolkata port. The presence of oil jetties and depots since the late 19th century and large jute mills such as Budge Budge Jute Mill, Cheviot Jute Mill, Caledonian Jute Mill and New Central Jute Mill guided its economy and spurred migration of workers from different parts of Bengal and neighbouring states.
Budge Budge lies on the flat alluvial plains of the lower Ganga system, right on the Hooghly’s left bank. The river influences every aspect of life here, from trade and transport to industry and fishing. Rice cultivation, fishing and river-based trade have long been important, and the town also functions as an oil depot for Kolkata, alongside jute and cotton milling and associated services. The Hooghly’s proximity has historically brought both opportunity and risk, with river erosion, flooding and industrial pollution affecting parts of the waterfront.
The town is well-connected to Kolkata by both rail and road. Budge Budge lies on the Budge Budge branch of the Kolkata Suburban Railway, which runs from Ballygunge to Budge Budge over about 19 km, linking the town directly to the city’s rail network and allowing large numbers of daily commuters to travel for work and business. By road, Budge Budge is connected to central Kolkata through Budge Budge Trunk Road and other arterial routes, with the distance to the city centre roughly 20 to 25 km, depending on the exact point chosen in Kolkata. Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport is about 37 to 40 km away by road.
Within South 24 Parganas, the district headquarters at Alipore and later administrative centres of the district lie in the broader Kolkata urban spread, within about 15 to 25 km of Budge Budge by road. Nearby towns such as Maheshtala, Behala, Diamond Harbour and Baruipur fall within an approximate radius of 20 to 60 km and are linked by a network of suburban rail lines and roads that tie the southern fringe of Kolkata to the district’s riverine and coastal belt. Towns in adjoining districts, such as Howrah across the river and Hooghly’s riverfront towns further north, are also within commuting distance via bridges, ferries and rail links.
Budge Budge had 261,771 registered voters in 2024, up slightly from 256,136 in 2021, 241,481 in 2019, 228,889 in 2016 and 199,778 in 2011. Muslims, with 37.30 per cent of the electorate, form the largest community here, followed by the Scheduled Castes at 17.32 per cent. It is a heavily urban constituency, with 79.59 per cent of voters living in towns and 20.41 per cent in villages. Voter turnout has been high and remarkably steady, recorded at 83.27 per cent in 2011, 83.56 per cent in 2016, 82.50 per cent in 2019, 84.79 per cent in 2021, and 82.61 per cent in 2024.
The Trinamool Congress does not depend solely on Muslim support in Budge Budge, as Muslims, though the largest group, are not a majority, and the party’s margins show backing from multiple sections of the electorate. With the BJP still some distance behind and the Left Front-Congress alliance having receded into near irrelevance in this seat, Trinamool Congress faces little serious challenge to its hold over the Budge Budge Assembly constituency. It goes into the 2026 Assembly elections as the clear favourite to retain the seat, barring an unexpected upheaval that dramatically influences local political loyalties.
(Ajay Jha)
