Here’s a quick look at the Jalpaiguri Lok Sabha seat:
Assembly segments:
Mekligunj
Dhupguri
Maynaguri
Jalpaiguri
Rajganj
Dabgram-Phulbari
Mal
Candidates
Bijoy Chandra Barman (Trinamool Congress)
Bhagirath Roy (Communist Party of India-Marxist)
Jayanta Ray (Bharatiya Janata Party)
Mani Kumar Darnal (Congress)
Who won the seat last time?
Bijoy Chandra Barman from the Trinamool Congress is the sitting MP, with 38% votes in 2014. The CPI-M finished second with 32.65% votes. The BJP had finished third here in the last Lok Sabha polls.
Who won before that?
This has been a CPI-M seat traditionally, which won consistently from 1980 to 2009. The Trinamool Congress won it for the first time in 2014 with a 38% increase in its vote when the Mamata Banerjee wave had touched every corner of West Bengal.
What about this time?
The BJP has gained ground in the past couple of years in the entire north Bengal, and has good support from the workers of the tea gardens. There was a spat between the Trinamool Congress and the BJP over opening of the Circuit Bench here. With overall decline of the support for the CPIM in the state, the party may not hope for a win, and therefore there is greater chance of the Trinamool Congress to win it this time too. But BJP is giving the Trinamool Congress major reasons to worry.
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