Constituency watch: Four-way contest, past electoral records give Trinamool edge at Medinipur

Kolkata, Nov 2 (IANS) As Medinipur Assembly constituency in West Midnapore district of West Bengal is going for the bypolls this month, three factors are in favour of the Trinamool Congress candidate, which gives him an edge over his nearest competitors.

The first advantage is the absolute organisational supremacy of the Trinamool Congress in the entire area of this assembly constituency.

The second advantage is the past electoral records of Medinipur in three consecutive assembly elections in 2011, 2016 and 2016, where the ruling party candidates got elected by comfortable margins.

Finally, the division in the opposition votes in the four-cornered contest for the bypolls where Congress and CPI(M)-led Left Front do not have any electoral alliance.

Trinamool Congress this time has fielded local party organisational face Sujoy Hazra, who is confident of increasing the winning margin of his party by little over 24,000 votes in the 2021 state assembly elections.

Medinipur Assembly is going for the bypolls as the erstwhile Trinamool Congress legislator from that constituency and actress-turned-politician June Malia got elected as the Lok Sabha member from Medinipur Lok Sabha in the general elections this year.

The polls will be conducted on November 13 and the counting will be on November 23.

Hazra's nearest contestants are BJP’s Subhajit Roy, CPI’s Mani Kuntal Khamrui and Congress’s Shyamal Kumar Ghosh.

The administration is apprehending some trouble in this constituency on the polling day since as on date pre-poll violence has been reported only from Medinipur, which is one of the six assembly constituencies that will be going for bypolls on November 13.

From 1982 to 2011, Medinipur had been a traditional stronghold of the Left where from the party candidates got elected for six consecutive times. However, the power equation changed in favour of Trinamool Congress in 2011, which marked the end of the 34-year Left Front rule in West Bengal and the beginning of the Trinamool Congress regime in the state.

Trinamool Congress candidates got elected from there for three consecutive terms in 2011, 2016 and 2021.

--IANS

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