Domjur Assembly constituency, a segment of the Sreerampur Lok Sabha seat, incorporates the entire Bally Jagachha community development block and seven gram panchayats of the Domjur block. Its name and composition might mislead an outsider into believing that Domjur could be a rural seat. However, on the contrary, it is an overwhelmingly urban constituency given its proximity to Howrah and Kolkata cities.
Established in 1951, Domjur has voted in all 17 Assembly elections held in West Bengal so far. The undivided Communist Party of India won the inaugural three elections, and then its offshoot CPI(M) took over, winning the seat nine times, including a stretch of seven consecutive victories between 1977 and 2006. The Congress party put up some feeble resistance to the Left dominance by winning the seat in 1967 and 1972. It took the advent of the Trinamool Congress to put a halt to the Left's dominance by winning the Domjur seat thrice in a row since 2011.
Rajib Banerjee of the Trinamool Congress won the seat, defeating CPI(M)’s sitting MLA Mohanta Chatterjee by 24,986 votes in 2011. He retained the seat in 2016 by a humongous margin of 107,701 votes, defeating an Independent politician, Promita Dutta. Banerjee’s decision to defect to the BJP months before the 2021 elections turned out to be disastrous. He succeeded in grabbing the BJP ticket but went down to Trinamool’s Kalyan Ghosh by 42,620 votes. Notably, Banerjee returned to the Trinamool Congress later that year and has been cooling his heels, expecting to be renominated in the 2026 polls.
The churn in Domjur started in the 2009 Lok Sabha itself when the Trinamool Congress jumped to lead the CPI(M) by 7,897 votes, and has since maintained its position at the top in the Domjur Assembly segment. Its lead over the CPI(M) increased to 39,923 votes in 2014. The BJP, which had remained marginalised in Domjur all these years, finishing a distant third, emerged as the Trinamool’s principal challenger, edging past the CPI(M) as Trinamool led the BJP by 55,033 votes in 2019. Trinamool’s lead increased further to 58,713 votes over the BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
Domjur had 310,717 registered voters in 2024, up from 299,250 in 2021, 275,995 in 2019, 259,741 in 2016, and 216,676 in 2011. Muslims form the largest bloc with approximately 24 per cent of voters, while the Scheduled Castes, the original inhabitants of Domjur, account for 13.41 per cent. 87.67 per cent of its voters are classified as urban and 12.33 per cent as rural. The voter turnout has fluctuated but remained consistently high. It stood at 86.26 per cent in 2011, 84.58 per cent in 2016, 82.14 per cent in 2019, and 83.87 per cent in 2021.
The origin of the town’s name has an interesting background. Dom is one of the lowest Hindu castes, traditionally engaged in menial and marginal occupations, while jur means settlement. Domjur originally was supposed to be a settlement of the Dom community, which gradually acquired an urban outlook as habitants from other parts of the state made Domjur their home.
Domjur is in the Howrah Sadar subdivision on the flat plains along the west bank of the Hooghly. Howrah district lies between the Hooghly and Rupnarayan rivers, with the Damodar also flowing through it, but Domjur today is more of a town of factories, workshops, and housing than of fields on the river banks.
The constituency lies within the Kolkata Metropolitan Area and forms part of the peri-urban and industrial belt that links Howrah with the Amta and Kona corridors. The local economy is driven by gold jewellery units, small and medium industries, warehousing and services, with a large share of the workforce commuting to jobs in Howrah and Kolkata, and a steadily shrinking dependence on agriculture.
Road connectivity is one of Domjur’s big strengths. It is linked to Howrah and Kolkata by the Kona Expressway and other arterial roads, and lies roughly 9 to 15 km from central Howrah and about 20 to 25 km from central Kolkata around Esplanade and the Maidan, keeping it well within daily commuting distance of the state capital’s main commercial and administrative hubs, including the Howrah Bridge and Vidyasagar Setu.
Rail connectivity is provided by the Domjur and Domjur Road stations on the Howrah–Amta line, with several local trains running to Howrah Junction over a distance of about 20–22 km. From Howrah, residents can access Sealdah and the airport side of Kolkata via the city’s suburban and metro network.
If there is one constituency where the Trinamool Congress can be absolutely sure of retaining the seat in the 2026 Assembly elections, it has to be Domjur. It has won and led in all seven major elections with big margins since 2009. The Left Front-Congress alliance has walked into the margins beyond impactful revival, and the BJP has been struggling to mount a serious challenge to the Trinamool Congress because of the huge margins. It might need the rare unpredictability of elections to come into play for the Trinamool Congress to get defeated in Domjur in the 2026 Assembly elections.
(Ajay Jha)
