Chandrakona is a municipality in the Ghatal subdivision of Paschim Medinipur district and an Assembly constituency created in 1962. It now covers Chandrakona, Ramjibanpur, and Khirpai municipalities, the Chandrakona I and II community development blocks, and the Niz Narajol gram panchayat of the Daspur I block. It is one of the seven segments under the Arambagh Lok Sabha seat.
Since 1962, Chandrakona has gone to the polls 15 times. The Congress won the first two elections in 1962 and 1967, after which the seat turned into a Left stronghold, with 11 straight victories over the next 42 years starting from 1969. The CPI(M) took the seat 10 times, including a run of eight consecutive wins, while the CPI captured it once in 1972. The Trinamool Congress, after three successive defeats to the CPI(M) in 2001, 2006, and 2011, finally broke the Left’s hold in 2016.
The CPI(M)’s narrow win in 2011 signalled that its supremacy was fraying. That year, its candidate Chhaya Dolai scraped past Trinamool’s Sibaram Das by just 1,296 votes, after which she crossed over to the Trinamool Congress. Contesting on a Trinamool ticket in 2016, she defeated the CPI(M)’s Santinath Bodhuk by a commanding margin of 38,381 votes. Trinamool retained Chandrakona in 2021 with Arup Dhara as its nominee, who prevailed over BJP candidate Sibaram Das, now a defector from Trinamool, by 11,281 votes, reflecting the BJP’s arrival as the principal challenger.
Recent candidate choices suggest a shortage of rooted leadership across parties. Both the Trinamool Congress and the BJP have relied on turncoats to strengthen their chances, poaching familiar faces from each other and from the old Left camp rather than projecting entirely home-grown contenders.
Lok Sabha trends from the Chandrakona segment broadly mirror this shift. In 2009, the CPI(M) led the Congress here by 32,039 votes. Since 2014, however, Trinamool has stayed ahead. It opened up a lead of 34,451 votes over the CPI(M) in 2014, then saw its advantage shrink to 3,631 votes over the BJP in 2019, before stabilising at a lead of 8,035 votes over the BJP in the 2024 general elections.
After a phase when Chandrakona town was marked by population decline, the electorate has been growing steadily. The constituency had 290,111 registered voters in 2024, up from 279,867 in 2021, 268,015 in 2019, 250,320 in 2016, and 216,439 in 2011. Scheduled Castes, who form 34.27 per cent of the voters, constitute the largest social group in this reserved seat, while Scheduled Tribes account for 5.11 per cent and Muslims for 12.50 per cent. The constituency remains predominantly rural, with 82.89 per cent of voters in villages and 17.11 per cent in urban areas. The voter turnout has remained high and healthy, with a peak of 92.85 per cent in 2011 and a low of 86.30 per cent in 2024. In between, the turnout was 89.98 per cent in 2016, 87.90 per cent in 2019, and 89.13 per cent in 2021.
Historically, Chandrakona has been known as a “city of temples”, with multiple layers of rulership reflected in its religious architecture. Local tradition and surviving structures point to an early settlement under rulers such as Chandraketu of the Ketu line, followed by the Bhan or Chouhan dynasty and later the Bardhaman Raj, each leaving behind temples and small fortifications. The Malleswara Shiva temple at Malleswarpur is one of the oldest shrines in Chandrakona, probably built in the 14th century. The Jorbangla temple, with its distinctive twin-hut profile, is another prominent laterite and terracotta structure that continues to define the town’s temple architecture.
The terrain around Chandrakona lies in the transitional zone between the lateritic uplands and the alluvial plains of South Bengal. The two Chandrakona blocks are part of the Kasai–Silabati river basin, with gently undulating land, patches of lateritic soil, and low depressions closer to river channels. The Shilabati River, which flows southeast through Bankura and Paschim Medinipur before meeting the Dwarakeswar near Ghatal to form the Rupnarayan, is the principal river system influencing the area.
Agriculture remains the mainstay of Chandrakona’s economy. Farmers grow paddy as the chief crop along with jute, oilseeds, potatoes, and vegetables on better irrigated tracts, while rain-fed plots and lateritic patches tend to be more fragile and dependent on the monsoon. Many households diversify through sharecropping, agricultural wage work, petty trade, transport services and small-scale manufacturing in and around the three municipalities. Remittances from family members working in larger towns, such as Kharagpur, Medinipur and the industrial belts of south Bengal also supplement local incomes.
Chandrakona is reasonably well connected by road within Paschim Medinipur and to the surrounding districts. State Highway 4 links the town to National Highway 6 (the old Kolkata-Mumbai road) at Mechogram, about 60 km away, which in turn connects to Kharagpur and Kolkata. Chandrakona is roughly 40 to 45 km north of Medinipur, the district headquarters, and about 25 to 30 km from Ghatal by road. Kharagpur lies to the southwest, at around 50 to 55 km. Arambagh, in the Hooghly district, is roughly 50 to 55 km away by road, and Bishnupur, in the Bankura district, is about 80 to 90 km distant. Rail connectivity is available from nearby junctions such as Medinipur, Kharagpur and Panskura. Kolkata, the state capital, lies roughly 120 to 130 km away by road.
Looking ahead to the 2026 Assembly elections, Chandrakona appears set for a tight contest between the Trinamool Congress and the BJP. Trinamool enters the fray as the incumbent, with two straight Assembly wins and a continuing edge in the Lok Sabha segment, while the BJP has emerged as a credible challenger, cutting into that lead and coming within “handshaking distance” in recent polls. The Left Front-Congress alliance, once the dominant force here, has shrunk to political irrelevance with a combined vote share now down in single digits and is unlikely, unless it stages an unexpected revival, to impact the result beyond any marginal splitting of votes. The BJP, for its part, would not mind a modest revival of the Left Front-Congress alliance if it chips away at Trinamool’s Muslim support base. On present trends, Chandrakona is headed for a close, high-intensity two-cornered fight in 2026, with both Trinamool and the BJP seeing a realistic chance of taking the seat.
(Ajay Jha)
