The constituency was established in 1951, with the first election held in 1952. It did not exist in 1957 and was resurrected ahead of the 1962 elections. Taldangra has gone to the polls 17 times, including the 2024 by-election. The CPI(M) has won the seat 10 times, the Congress four times and the Trinamool Congress three times.
In 2011, the CPI(M) won the seat for the eighth time in a row while Manoranjan Patra secured his fourth consecutive victory by defeating the Congress’s Arun Kumar Pathak by 7,165 votes. The Trinamool Congress, which had been defeated here by the CPI(M) in 2001 and 2006 and did not contest the seat in 2011 under a seat-sharing agreement with the Congress, finally opened its account in 2016 when its nominee Samir Chakraborty defeated the CPI(M)’s Amiya Patra by 13,669 votes. In 2021, Arup Chakraborty replaced Samir Chakraborty as the Trinamool candidate and retained the seat by 12,377 votes, with the BJP’s Shyamal Kumar Sarkar emerging as the runner-up. Arup Chakraborty’s election to the Lok Sabha caused the 2024 by-election, in which Trinamool Congress’s Falguni Singhababu prevailed over the BJP’s Ananya Roy Chakraborty by 34,082 votes.
Parliamentary election trends in the Taldangra Assembly segment mirror the broader shift from Left dominance to a Trinamool-BJP contest. In 2009, the CPI(M) led the Congress by 28,795 votes. In 2014, the Trinamool Congress moved ahead, leading the CPI(M) by 1,509 votes. In 2019, the BJP surged ahead and led the Trinamool Congress by 17,268 votes, before the Trinamool regained the upper hand in the 2024 Lok Sabha election with a lead of 8,483 votes.
Taldangra Assembly constituency had 207,311 voters on the draft electoral roll following the 2025 Special Intensive Revision, as reflected in the SIR 2026 draft, marking a sharp decline of 35,009 voters from 242,320 in 2024. Earlier, the electorate stood at 233,291 in 2021, 232,927 in 2019, 206,919 in 2016 and 179,693 in 2011. Scheduled Castes account for 29.14 per cent of voters, Scheduled Tribes 13.27 per cent and Muslims 7.20 per cent. The constituency remains overwhelmingly rural, with 97.52 per cent rural voters and just 2.48 per cent urban. Turnout has been consistently high with 87.40 per cent in 2011, 86.77 per cent in 2016, 84.73 per cent in 2019, 87.25 per cent in 2021 and 83.10 per cent in 2024.
Taldangra lies in the southern part of Bankura district and functions as a block headquarters. It is located roughly 25 to 30 km south of the district headquarters at Bankura by road. Nearby towns include Bankura itself to the north, Bishnupur, about 25 to 30 km to the east, and smaller growth centres and haats serving the surrounding villages. Kolkata, the state capital, is about 135 to 165 km away by road from Taldangra. Taldangra is closer to the Jharkhand border, which can be reached from Bankura by a roughly two-hour drive.
The terrain in Taldangra is part of the undulating lateritic uplands that characterise much of western and southern Bankura. Red and lateritic soils, mixed with patches of alluvium, support paddy cultivation in low-lying areas, while higher ground often has scrub, orchards or rain-fed crops. The area is drained by small rivers and rivulets linked to the Damodar-Kangsabati system and their minor tributaries. Agriculture remains the backbone of the local economy, with paddy, oilseeds, pulses and vegetables as main crops. Many households supplement farm income with daily-wage work, seasonal migration, small trading, forest produce collection and employment under government schemes. Larger towns like Bankura and Bishnupur provide markets, higher education and better health facilities.
The SIR has created unease in Taldangra. Despite Muslims forming only a modest share of the electorate, as many as 35,009 names have been removed from the rolls, officially on grounds such as death, duplication and out-migration, but without any caste or community-wise breakdown being shared publicly. This opacity has left all parties unsure about which social groups have been hit the hardest. The BJP led in the 2019 Lok Sabha election from this segment and has since been giving the Trinamool Congress a strong fight, while the Trinamool regained the lead in 2024 and holds the Assembly seat.
Under normal circumstances, the contest in 2026 might have favoured the Trinamool Congress, given its recovery since 2019 and its organisational depth in rural Bankura. However, if the final electoral roll remains largely unchanged from the SIR draft, the Trinamool may feel it has been put at a disadvantage before a single vote is cast, as the large deletions inject uncertainty and could narrow its cushion in closely fought booths. The SIR, in that sense, appears to have thrown the field wide open in Taldangra and has set the stage for a close and intriguing contest between the Trinamool and the BJP in the 2026 Assembly election, with the Left Front-Congress alliance, smaller parties and independents likely to remain peripheral to the outcome.
(Ajay Jha)
