Goghat, in the Arambag subdivision of Hooghly district, is made up of the Goghat I and Goghat II community development blocks. It is one of the seven Assembly segments under the Arambagh Lok Sabha seat.
Established in 1951, Goghat went off the electoral map in the 1957 and 1962 elections and was revived in 1967. Of the 15 Assembly elections held so far, the All India Forward Bloc, a key Left Front partner, has won the seat nine times, the Congress party twice, while an Independent, the Janata Party, the Trinamool Congress and the BJP have each won once.
Biswanath Karak of the Forward Bloc won the Goghat seat in 2011, defeating Congress candidate Debasish Medda by 4,265 votes. This brought the party’s tally to seven consecutive wins. The run ended in 2016 when Manas Majumdar of the Trinamool Congress defeated sitting MLA Karak by 30,886 votes. The BJP, which had polled 4.34 per cent in 2011 and 9.58 per cent in 2016, stunned observers in 2021 when Biswanath Karak, who had crossed over from the Forward Bloc to the BJP, won the seat by 4,147 votes against Trinamool’s sitting MLA. The fact that three different parties have won the last three elections points to a churn in Goghat’s politics.
The BJP’s 2021 win was backed up by its performance in the Lok Sabha polls from the Goghat segment. After polling 6.20 per cent of the vote here in 2009 and 11.83 per cent in 2014, it surged ahead of its rivals in 2019, establishing a lead of 8,067 votes over the Trinamool Congress. That lead dipped slightly to 5,886 votes in 2024, with Trinamool again in second place. For Trinamool, the high point came in 2014, when it led the CPI(M) by 45,755 votes after trailing it by 60,743 votes in 2009.
Goghat had 254,420 registered voters in 2024, up from 246,570 in 2021, 238,694 in 2019, 224,139 in 2016 and 193,452 in 2011. Scheduled Castes, for whom the seat is reserved, form 37.38 per cent of the electorate, while Scheduled Tribes account for 5.32 per cent and Muslims 12.50 per cent. It is entirely rural, with no urban voters on the rolls. Voter turnout has been high, at 91.19 per cent in 2011, 88.58 per cent in 2016, 86.91 per cent in 2019 and 89.03 per cent in 2021.
Goghat I block lies in the western part of Hooghly district and is part of the old alluvial tract, with flat, fertile land fed by the Damodar and Dwarakeswar river systems and their canals. The soils are suited to intensive cultivation of paddy, potato, jute, vegetables and orchard crops. Goghat II, just to the west, falls in the western uplands, an extension of the rocky and undulating terrain of neighbouring Bankura, which makes parts of the block slightly higher and more uneven but still cultivable. Together, the two blocks form a predominantly agrarian belt.
Agriculture is the backbone of the Goghat economy. Rice remains the main crop, but the blocks contribute significantly to Hooghly’s rich potato output, and farmers also grow jute, oilseeds, vegetables and fruits. Several cold storages serve the potato belt, and a dense network of small markets links farmers to traders and wholesalers. A share of the population works as agricultural labourers, while others find employment in small trades, transport and daily wage work in nearby towns like Arambag and Tarakeswar.
Goghat is reasonably well connected by road and rail. The Goghat I block headquarters is located approximately 82 km from Chinsurah, the district headquarters, by road. The nearby town of Arambag, the subdivision headquarters, is approximately 10 km away. Trains on the Goghat-Arambag stretch cover the distance in roughly 11 to 15 minutes, while buses and shared vehicles take a similar time. Kolkata is approximately 80 to 90 km away via Arambag and the highway network, a journey of around two and a half hours by road. Other Hooghly towns such as Tarakeswar and Pursurah lie within about 30 to 40 km, while crossings into Paschim Medinipur through Chandrakona and Ghatal fall within a wider 40 to 60 km radius.
A fierce contest is clearly building up between the BJP and the Trinamool Congress in Goghat. The BJP may have captured the seat in 2021 and led in the last two Lok Sabha polls, but its margins have ranged only between about 4,000 and 8,000 votes, which is far from decisive in a rural seat with high turnout. The Trinamool Congress, for its part, must watch the Left Front-Congress alliance, which managed just over six per cent of the vote in the last two elections but could hurt Trinamool more than the BJP if it recovers ground. The BJP would welcome such a revival, as it would split the anti-BJP space and reduce pressure on its own vote bank. If that does not happen, the party faces an intriguing and testing contest in its attempt to retain Goghat in the 2026 Assembly elections, with the Trinamool Congress pressing hard to regain the seat.
(Ajay Jha)
