Manikchak Assembly constituency is part of the Maldaha Dakshin Lok Sabha seat and covers the entire Manikchak community development block, along with Milki, Fulbaria, and Sovanagar gram panchayats of the English Bazar block.
Established in 1951, Manikchak has gone to the Assembly polls 16 times. The seat disappeared from the electoral map in 1957 and returned in 1962. The Congress has won here nine times, the CPI(M) four times, the Trinamool Congress twice, and the now defunct Swatantra Party won once in 1967. A striking feature of Manikchak is that voters often use different yardsticks in Assembly and Lok Sabha elections. They favour the BJP in parliamentary polls but turn to the Trinamool or the Congress in Assembly elections.
The Trinamool Congress registered its first Assembly victory here in 2011, when Sabitri Mitra defeated Ratna Bhattacharya of the CPI(M) by 6,217 votes, with the Congress as an ally. After the alliance broke, the Congress snatched the seat in 2016. Md. Mottakin Alam defeated Sabitri Mitra by 12,603 votes. The Trinamool took back the seat in 2021, by which time the BJP had surged ahead of both the Congress and the Left Front, which were in alliance. Sabitri Mitra won her second term by defeating the BJP’s Gour Chand Mandal by a commanding margin of 33,878 votes. Congress’s sitting MLA fell to a poor third with only 5.59 per cent of the vote, almost 40 percentage points less than in 2016, while the BJP’s vote share rose by about 25 percentage points over the same period.
The constituency’s unpredictability is even clearer in the Lok Sabha results. In 2009, the Congress led the CPI(M) by 16,970 votes and the Trinamool by 14,400 votes in the Manikchak segment. The BJP then emerged as the main force in parliamentary contests. In 2019, it led the Congress by 29,889 votes here, and in 2024 it retained its lead, though by a narrower margin of 8,535 votes.
Following the 2025 Special Intensive Revision, Manikchak had 254,971 voters on the draft electoral roll, down by 12,799 from 267,704 in 2024. Earlier, the electorate stood at 253,353 in 2021, 239,745 in 2019, 220,401 in 2016, and 185,471 in 2011. Muslims are the largest group here, forming 47.70 per cent of the voters, while Scheduled Castes account for 23.90 per cent and Scheduled Tribes 12.04 per cent of the electorate.
Manikchak is predominantly rural, with only 3.69 per cent of voters in urban pockets. Turnout has remained high and stable, at 79.96 per cent in 2011, 79.16 per cent in 2016, 78.61 per cent in 2019, 81.78 per cent in 2021, and 73.68 per cent in 2024.
Manikchak lies on the left bank of the Ganga and gives its name to a block that falls in the diara tract of Malda, where new alluvium deposited by the river creates fertile but unstable land. The broader Malda region has a long history linked to the medieval capitals of Gauda and Pandua and later Mughal and colonial rule, with river routes shaping trade and power. In recent decades, Manikchak block has gained notoriety for severe riverbank erosion. Studies show that the Ganga’s shifting course between the late 20th century and recent years has eaten into large parts of Manikchak, displacing families and repeatedly reshaping the floodplain.
The terrain in Manikchak is flat, low-lying and criss-crossed by channels and embankments, typical of the Ganga-Fulahar confluence zone. The Ganga enters West Bengal near this block, while the Fulahar joins it within Malda district, and together they define the local hydrology, erosion pattern and flood risk. The soils are fertile, supporting paddy, jute and other crops, but the same river that feeds the land also undermines it through scouring and bank collapse.
The local economy rests on agriculture, mango orchards, river-based activities and migration. Manikchak sits inside Malda’s famous mango belt, and mango cultivation, along with paddy and seasonal crops, forms a major source of income. Fishing, sand extraction, ferry work and petty trade along the riverbanks provide additional livelihoods. Many residents also seek work in Malda town, other urban centres in West Bengal and farther afield, especially when erosion destroys land or housing.
Manikchak is connected to Malda town, the district headquarters, mainly by road. The driving distance between Malda and Manikchak is about 30 to 35 km. Malda serves as the principal railhead, linking the area to Kolkata and North Bengal via the Howrah-New Jalpaiguri and other trunk routes. Residents usually travel by road to Malda for long-distance trains and higher-level health, education and administrative services.
Ferry crossings from Manikchak and nearby ghats provide important links across the Ganga towards Jharkhand and Bihar. Rajmahal in Jharkhand, across the river, is reachable via road-ferry combinations and lies around 35 to 40 km away when the river is crossed from Manikchak. Larger towns such as Bhagalpur in Bihar and Sahibganj in Jharkhand are further upstream, while Katihar in Bihar is about 80 km away by road. Kolkata, the state capital, lies about 330 to 340 km away by road.
To the east, the international border with Bangladesh near Malda and Chapai Nawabganj district is relatively close in linear terms and widely known to be only partly fenced. Official and research reports repeatedly flag this stretch of the Indo-Bangladesh boundary as a porous corridor, used for illegal migration and informal cross-border movement into Malda and from there to other parts of West Bengal and neighbouring states. Towns across the border such as Chapai Nawabganj, are part of a wider transboundary zone linked by history, language and informal flows rather than only formal crossings.
Deletion of 12,799 voters after the SIR, described officially as the removal of illegal immigrants, dead, migrated and bogus entries, is likely to have some impact on the 2026 Assembly contest, though the precise community-wise effect is not known. Given that both the Trinamool Congress and the Congress bank heavily on Muslim support, any pruning in this segment of the electorate may hurt both parties. More politically significant, however, is the renewed unity in the A.B.A. Ghani Khan Choudhury family after Mausam Noor’s return to the Congress from Trinamool Congress, which raises the possibility of a more consolidated Congress-Ghani Khan vote and less fragmentation of Muslim votes than in the recent past.
The BJP would like the Trinamool to remain strong enough in Manikchak for Muslim votes to split vertically, clearing a path for its maiden Assembly victory on the back of its Lok Sabha strength. At the same time, it will have to find a way to convert its parliamentary leads into Assembly gains in a rural, mixed constituency where local factors and candidate profiles have historically mattered. Between the SIR-induced churn in the rolls, the Congress family realignment and the three-way competition among Trinamool, Congress and BJP, Manikchak in 2026 is set for a genuinely triangular and closely watched contest rather than a straightforward repeat of any previous election.
(Ajay Jha)
