Naihati has witnessed 18 Assembly elections, including the 2024 by-election, since its inception. The Left Front won nine times, with seven victories of the CPI(M) and two of the undivided CPI, while the Congress interrupted the Left’s chain with five wins. The Trinamool Congress has won all elections since 2011, including the 2024 by-election triggered by the resignation of its thrice MLA Partha Bhowmick upon his election to the Lok Sabha.
Bhowmick, a popular theatre artist, opened the Trinamool’s account here in 2011, breaking CPI(M) leader Ranjit Kundu’s chain of three back-to-back victories by 27,470 votes after Trinamool’s heavy defeats in 2001 and 2006. His margin rose to 28,628 in 2016 when the CPI(M) replaced Kundu with Gargi Chatterjee. Bhowmick made a hat-trick in 2021, though his margin fell to 18,855, as the BJP, with Falguni Patra as its candidate, surged past the CPI(M) to become the principal challenger. Bhowmick’s election from the Barrackpore Lok Sabha seat in 2024 led to a by-election in which Sanat Dey defeated BJP’s Rupak Mitra by 49,277 votes.
Although the Trinamool has led in three of the last four Lok Sabha polls in the Naihati segment, its pole position has been challenged with a narrow 2,328 vote lead over the CPI(M) in 2009, rising sharply against the CPI(M) to 341,321 in 2014, before the BJP established a lead of 1,226 in 2019. The Trinamool snatched back a 15,518 vote lead over the BJP in 2024.
Naihati had 198,732 voters in the draft roll for the 2026 elections, a marginal rise from 195,105 in 2024. Earlier, the rolls stood at 193,930 in 2021, 187,931 in 2019, 180,923 in 2016, and 153,522 in 2011. The Scheduled Castes account for 15.09 per cent, the Scheduled Tribes 1.97 per cent, and Muslims 10.30 per cent. The constituency is overwhelmingly urban, with 88.26 per cent of voters in municipal areas and 13.74 per cent in villages. Turnout has remained robust and consistent with 85.85 per cent in 2011, 80.96 per cent in 2016, 80.28 per cent in 2019, and 80.67 per cent in 2021.
Naihati’s history is tied to the rise of the jute belt along the Hooghly from the late 19th century, when mills clustered along the river to exploit cheap labour, coal and port access. The industrial belt from Cossipore to Naihati saw intense labour mobilisation and unrest in the 1890s, with employers seeking additional police supervision in the riverine municipalities and European assistants organising armed volunteer forces near Barrackpore. This early industrialisation guided the town’s working-class culture and its political contestations across the 20th century. Jute’s global boom from the mid-19th to mid-20th century drew raw fibre from the Bengal delta and fed mills along the Hooghly, embedding Naihati in a world of gunny and hessian where peasant cultivation upstream met factory labour downstream. The industry’s growth with steam-powered machinery by the late 1860s and the clustering of mills along the river created a durable industrial corridor that still defines the local economy and social life of the region.
Naihati lies on the eastern bank of the Hooghly with flat alluvial terrain and a dense urban area. The economy has been anchored by jute mills, allied engineering and small manufacturing. Local Bengalis, historically, preferred agriculture and petty trade, while mills recruited migrant labour from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Odisha, these workers settled in mill lines and chawls that grew into distinct non-Bengali neighbourhoods or ghettos. Their languages, festivals, and food influenced Naihati’s culture and electoral behaviour. Communal and labour tensions recorded in the jute belt’s history echo in the town’s present, where class and community identities intersect with party competition. Infrastructure and connectivity are strong. Naihati Junction is located on the Sealdah main line with frequent suburban trains to Sealdah and Barrackpore. The town is connected by road through Barrackpore Trunk Road and Kalyani Expressway to Kolkata and Kalyani, ferries link Naihati to Chinsurah across the river and to other ghats along the Hooghly, making daily commuting and goods movement easy.
Esplanade in Central Kolkata is about 30 km south of Naihati, Howrah station is 32 km southwest, Sealdah station is 28 km south, the airport at Dum Dum is 20 km south, the Maidan is 32 km south, Salt Lake Sector V is 22 km south, Barasat, the district headquarters, is 25 km southeast, Barrackpore is 10 km south, Madhyamgram is 20 km south, Chinsurah in Hooghly district across the river is 10 km west, Serampore is 22 km southwest, Howrah city is 32 km southwest, Alipore in South 24 Parganas is 35 km south, and Diamond Harbour is 70 km south.
The 2026 Assembly election is headed for a straight fight with the BJP remaining in the frame as the Trinamool’s only challenge, given the steady decline of the Left Front-Congress alliance to the margins. The BJP will try to woo Scheduled Caste voters and also eye the large non-Bengali electorate rooted in the mill neighbourhoods, while hoping for consolidation of Hindu voters behind it. The Trinamool’s organisational depth and its fourth consecutive victories in the Assembly elections give it a clear edge. But the BJP’s 2019 Lok Sabha lead and its rise to principal challenger in 2021 show it retains a path. The contest will likely hinge on turnout in urban wards and swing among migrant worker families. Union networks and local issues can also tilt margins, making Naihati a high-intensity urban seat where small shifts can decide the result.
(Ajay Jha)
