Medinipur Lok Sabha Constituency: It’s a Clash of the Fashionistas – News18

The Medinipur Lok Sabha constituency is one of 42 parliamentary constituencies in West Bengal. It is a general category seat and comprises parts of Paschim Medinipur and Purba Medinipur districts. Seven Assembly segments fall under the Medinipur Lok Sabha seat, of which six are currently held by the Trinamool Congress (Egra, Dantan, Keshiary-ST, Narayangarh, Kharagpur and Medinipur), while one is held by the BJP (Kharagpur Sadar).

Polling Date — May 25, 2024; Phase 6

Sitting MP — Dilip Ghosh (BJP)

Candidates — Agnimitra Paul (BJP), June Malia (TMC), Biplab Bhatta (CPI), Sambhunath Chattopadhyay (Congress)

Political Dynamics

• In the political showdown between Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress and the opposition BJP in West Bengal, Midnapore is one of the two regions that seem to hold the key, the other being the Gangetic plains.
• The Midnapore region, recognised as Bengal’s tribal belt, consists of five districts – Bankura, Paschim Medinipur, Purba Medinipur, Purulia, and Jhargram. Six of the seven Assembly seats that fall under the Medinipur (previously Midnapore) Lok Sabha constituency are located in Paschim Medinipur, while one falls in Purba Medinipur.
• The balance of power in the region had shifted in favour of the BJP following Suvendu Adhikari’s switch in 2021, despite TMC’s resurgence and strengthened influence through welfare schemes targeted at tribal Kurmi and Mahato communities.
• Medinipur constituency is one of the few in West Bengal which will witness a four-cornered contest, following the failure of seat-sharing talks between the Left Front and the Congress. The main race is, however, between the BJP and the Trinamool Congress.
• This time, Medinipur is probably the only Lok Sabha seat in West Bengal where both the prime contenders, the BJP and the TMC, seem more troubled with resistance from within than outside.
• Some observers view the battle for Medinipur as one between current and former TMC supporters, roughly translating into followers of Mamata Banerjee and turncoat Suvendu Adhikari.
• BJP’s Candidate Gamble: What could have been a cakewalk for the BJP is now an open fight with the saffron party deciding to relocate popular sitting MP and former state party president Dilip Ghosh to the Bardhaman-Durgapur seat.
• In Medinipur, the BJP has replaced Ghosh with the party’s state Mahila Morcha president Agnimitra Paul.
• Paul, a Kolkata-based fashion designer and sitting Asansol Dakshin MLA, has had a meteoric rise in the BJP since she was inducted into the party, ironically by Ghosh, in March 2019. She has been elevated to the rank of party state general secretary.
• Critics attribute the candidate reshuffle in Medinipur to the BJP’s internal power struggle between Dilip Ghosh and Suvendu Adhikari camps, the ‘veterans’ and ‘newcomers’, respectively.
• Trouble on the Ground: While Ghosh accepted the challenge to prove his mettle in a hitherto uncharted territory without complaint, the same cannot be said of his aggrieved followers on the ground in Medinipur. As per sources, majority of them have either bowed out of the field or are actively working for the rival camp.
• One such disgruntled BJP veteran and Kharagpur-based businessman is 56-year-old Pradip Patnaik who joined the TMC as late as May 5. He had been in the BJP for 44 years. In an interview to PTI, Patnaik said the party is now “unsuitable for old-timers” as they are “cornered and not respected”. Sources say the sentiment is true of Patnaik’s contemporaries even though they may not have made a public spectacle of it yet.
• Agnimitra Paul, however, claims the “initial differences” have now been ironed out, thanks to key roles played by “the Sangh, Adhikari and the party’s central leadership”.
• She has further claimed she was hoping for a ticket from Bardhaman-Durgapur but accepted “without question” when the party’s senior leadership offered her Medinipur.
• Pro-Paul Factors: Agnimitra Paul has three major advantages in Medinipur. First, the comfortable victory margin of her party in the 2019 polls is keeping her a few steps ahead in the race. Second, during the last five years, Dilip Ghosh has not only strategically nurtured the constituency, but has also structured the scattered organisational network there. Third, given the infighting in the Trinamool Congress in the district, the possibility of a section of the party machinery becoming deliberately inactive cannot be ruled out.
• TMC’s Trump Card: Actor-turned-politician June Maliah, TMC’s Medinipur MLA, is Mamata Banerjee’s trump card from this seat.
• Maliah replaced former Congress-turned-TMC leader Manas Bhunia who lost the 2019 polls by nearly 89,000 votes.
• Maliah has experienced the bitter taste of TMC’s factional fights in the region before, but gaining cadre support is just as daunting for her as for her BJP rival.
• According to party insiders, June Malia’s nomination was a decision taken out of compulsion to avoid infighting in the West Midnapore district leadership over the choice of any candidate having roots there.
• Infighting Threat: Local political observers highlight the TMC’s internal feuds frequently popping up, with Medinipur Municipality chairman Soumen Khan on one side of the divide and the party’s influential local leader Bishu Pandab on the other.
• Both Mamata Banerjee and her nephew and party general secretary Abhishek Banerjee are believed to have repeatedly called for a united face in closed-door meetings.
• Putting on a brave front, Maliah says such differences are a routine affair in politics. She claims the grassroot workers have accepted her candidature and called her nomination procession a “carnival”.
• Statistical Advantage: In the event of consolidation of the dedicated vote bank of the ruling party and the division in the anti-Trinamool Congress and anti-BJP votes between the Congress and CPI candidates, June Malia can have a statistical advantage.
• Glamour Quotient: With fashion-designer Agnimitra Paul from the BJP and actor-turned-politician June Maliah from the TMC, the electorate of this rural south Bengal constituency is getting a taste of the glamour world as both candidates trade in material comforts for the heat and dust of Medinipur.
• It’s a drastic change of pace for the land that has given innumerable freedom fighters, including Khudiram Bose and Matangini Hazra, social reformers like Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar and patrons of art like Sisir Kumar Bhaduri.
• CPI Too in the Fray: The relatively silent, albeit impactful, challenge to both TMC and BJP may come from the Left, with CPI candidate Biplab Bhatta trying his luck for the second consecutive time.
• The seat had remained a Left stronghold for a good 25 years till the TMC wrested it from CPI in 2014.
• In 2019, Bhatta had managed barely 4.4% of the votes polled, registering a dip of about 27% vote share from the party’s earlier performance.
• He claims that last time, supporters of the Left had voted for the BJP “out of disgust for the TMC”, but this time many Left supporters will do a “ghar wapsi”.
• Among the issues he has been raising are grievances of central government employees in Kharagpur working in the Railways, the Air Force and at IIT, and claims these would have adverse impact on BJP’s poll fortunes.
• Voting Pattern: Medinipur Lok Sabha constituency had been a traditional CPI bastion since 1980, giving iconic parliamentarians and orators like late Narayan Choubey and late Indrajit Gupta.
• Even in the midst of the massive Trinamool Congress wave in 2009, CPI’s Prabodh Panda managed a victory here by a margin of around 50,000 votes.
• However, the equation changed in 2014, with Trinamool Congress candidate and actress-turned-politician Sandhya Roy getting elected from the constituency.
• The equation changed again in 2019, with the BJP’s Dilip Ghosh emerging as the victor.
• Non-Bengali Population: The Medinipur constituency has a sizeable non-Bengali population, particularly in Kharagpur, and also has Telugu-speaking families who have been residing here for decades. These votes traditionally to go the BJP.
• Not Much Sandeshkhali Impact: Sources say that while allegations of land grabbing and sexual abuse against TMC leaders is talked about in Medinipur, it may not have much impact electorally even among women voters.

Key Constituency Issues

• Kurmi Demand: The Kurmi community, which has significant presence in Medinipur, has been demanding inclusion in the Scheduled Tribe (ST) list and recognition of their religious practices.
• The TMC has announced in its poll manifesto for the 2024 elections that it will stand by the Kurmi community’s demand for ST status and pursue the Centre for its approval.
• In April 2023, the Kurmis protested for five days, blocking roads and railways. Some even attacked the bungalow of outgoing Medinipur MP Dilip Ghosh.
• Corruption: Local-level corruption as well as allegations of irregularities in disbursal of government assistance has been cited as a major election issue in Medinipur.
• The school job recruitment scam is also likely to have a pro-BJP impact in the constituency starved of jobs.
• The Calcutta High Court had on April 22 invalidated the appointment of 25,753 teachers and non-teaching staff in state-run and state-aided schools of West Bengal.
• The state government challenged the Calcutta High Court order, saying it cancelled the appointments “arbitrarily”.
• On May 7, the Supreme Court termed the alleged recruitment scam as “systemic fraud” and said authorities were duty-bound to maintain the digitised records pertaining to the appointment of the teachers and non-teaching staff.
• Though the top court stayed the Calcutta High Court verdict of invalidating the appointments, the ordeal has helped bolster the BJP’s allegations of corruption and job stagnation against the TMC government.
• Lack of Development: Youth in Medinipur are said to be disillusioned over the lack of job creation and development in the constituency.
• Many of them are veering towards the BJP which has promised job and wealth creation in the region. Allegations of corruption have also tarnished the TMC’s image here.
• Ghatal Master Plan: The Rs 1,500-crore ‘Ghatal Master Plan’ is a mega project that entails dredging of riverbeds and strengthening of embankments of 10 major rivers including Rupnarayan, Shilabati and Kansabati, which get swollen during monsoon causing deluges.
• Ghatal is a low-lying riverine area in Paschim Medinipur district that gets affected by floods almost every year.
• In 1979, the Irrigation Department of the erstwhile Left Front government had approved the Ghatal Master Plan to save the people of the region from floods.
• West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee has alleged that the BJP-led central government is delaying providing clearances to the flood prevention plan that will benefit 17 lakh people.
• She announced in February this year that her government would implement the Ghatal Master Plan without any help from the central government. The TMC supremo said it would require a budget of Rs 1,250 crore.

Voter Demographics

Social composition

SC — 15.2%

ST — 12.6%

Religious composition

Buddhist — 0.03%

Christian — 0.35%

Jain — 0.03%

Muslim — 9.9%

Sikh — 0.05%

Geographical composition

Rural — 76.1%

Urban — 23.9%

Major Infra Projects in Medinipur

• Paschim Medinipur Projects: In November 2022, Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari inaugurated and laid the foundation stone for 4 NH projects worth Rs 5351 crore in West Medinipur.
• The projects include the construction of 55km Kharagpur to Chichra 4-lane road stretch at the total cost of Rs 613 crore and construction of 162km Panagarh to Dankuni (NH-2) 6-lane road stretch at the total cost of Rs 4,215 crore.
• Integrated Steel Plant: In 2023, former Indian cricket team captain Sourav Ganguly announced plans to establish an integrated steel plant at Salboni in Paschim Medinipur.
• Captain Steel, which will assist in executing the project, has reportedly asked the state government for 600-700 acres land.
• It aims to establish a one-million-tonne capacity integrated steel plant with a tentative project cost of Rs 2,500 crore.
• The project will come up on the same land parcel where the JSW group had initially planned to set up a mega steel plant, but it failed to materialise due to concerns related to raw material security.
• It is believed that the group will surrender a portion of the 4,700 acres allocated to them as it will not be required for their cement and paint projects.
• Ram Sita Hanuman Temple: The Ram Sita Hanuman temple in Midnapore is located on the banks of the Kansai River.
• The temple was rebuilt by the Midnapore municipality chairman Soumen Khan after a portion of it was damaged during a water project.
• The temple was inaugurated in January 2024, a week before the consecration of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya.
• Kharagpur-Adityapur Third Line Project: The Kharagpur-Adityapur section is known to be a busy and traffic-heavy route. The new line, which is nearing completion, is expected to ease this congestion.
• The third line was approved in 2015-2016 and is spread over 55km in West Bengal and 77km in Jharkhand.
• As per reports, 82% of the project has been completed so far and 17 of the 19 major bridges have been completed.

Explore in-depth coverage of Lok Sabha Election 2024 Schedule, Voter Turnout, Upcoming Phase And Much More At News18 Website