Bhowanipore assembly election 2021: Can BJP surprise TMC on Mamata Banerjee’s turf?

Home Minister Amit Shah with Rudranil Ghosh campaigning in Bhowanipore. (PTI)

Bhowanipore West Bengal Assembly Election 2021 Results, Rudranil Ghosh vs Sovandeb Chattopadhyay vs Shadab Khan: Bhowanipore (also spelt as Bhawanipur or Bhabanipur) is one of the high-profile assembly constituencies of West Bengal. Part of Kolkata district, Bhowanipore was represented twice by sitting chief minister Mamata Banerjee. Banerjee won from here in 2011 and 2016. However, in this election, Banerjee moved to Nandigram to take on her former protégé Suvendu Adhikari, now a BJP leader. She has instead fielded a senior party leader from Bhowanipore to take on Rudranil Ghosh of BJP and Shadab Khan of Congress .

In January, Mamata Banerjee announced that she was moving to Nandigram but would field someone trusted to take care of people of Bhowanipore. She said Nandigram was close to her heart and that she can forget her name but she cannot forget Nandigram. She also said that considering the attachment she had with people of Nandigram, she wanted to contest from there. Banerjee also said that she was eager to contest from Bhowanipore as well.

The chief minister that she would like to contest from both the seats because she felt both Nandigram and Bhowanipore were like her sisters. Following her announcement of leaving Bhowanipore, the BJP claimed that Mamata was scared that she would be defeated and that was why she left the seat. In a tweet, BJP’s Amit Malviya said: “By relinquishing her traditional seat of Bhowanipore, she has already conceded defeat, even before the first vote has been cast. Bring it on. Bengal is ready for change!”

BJP MP Asansol MP Babul Supriyo said that not fighting from Bhowanipore shows that Mamata Banerjee was scared. He said it was just her fear of defeat.

In 2011 byelection, Mamata Banerjee had defeated CPI-M’s Nandini Mukherjee in Bhowanipore. Banerjee got 77.46 per cent votes while her competitor could secure just 20.43 per cent votes. In the next election held in 2016, Banerjee again emerged victorious but her vote percentage came down by 30 per cent, a big fall. She got 65,520 votes with 47.67 per cent vote share while Congress’ Deepa Dasmunshi got 40219 votes with 29.26 per cent vote share.