Baharampur West Bengal Lok Sabha Elections 2024: Voting Date, Results, Candidates, Main Parties, and Schedule

West Bengal Lok Sabha Election (Photo-PTI)

The Baharampur parliamentary constituency in West Bengal, previously known as Berhampore, was traditionally a bastion on the Left until it was wrested from the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) by the Congress's Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury in 1999.

Scheduled for polling on May 13 in Phase 4, Baharampur has witnessed a political landscape oscillating between the Left and Congress since its inception in 1952, eventually leaning towards the Congress as a stronghold over the past few decades.

Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, president of the West Bengal unit of Congress, currently serves as the sitting Member of Parliament from Baharampur and is slated to contest again this year. He has been a formidable presence in Baharampur, securing victory for the Congress in three consecutive terms from 2009 to 2019.

Chowdhury also won all seven Assembly segments in the 2016 Assembly elections falling under the Baharampur Lok Sabha seat.

The upcoming election in Baharampur promises a three-way contest among the Congress, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and the Trinamool Congress (TMC).

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TMC has fielded former cricketer Yusuf Pathan, who will be making his political debut, while the BJP has nominated 66-year-old surgeon Dr. Nirmal Kumar Saha.

Baharampur has had only five Members of Parliament from two parties since the seat first went to polls in 1952 — Tridib Chaudhuri, Nani Bhattacharya, and Pramothes Mukherjee from the RSP, and Atish Chandra Sinha and Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury from the Congress.

Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress, which has been the ruling party in Bengal since 2011, has not been able to win the seat yet. The BJP, too, has been unable to gain a foothold in the constituency.

Baharampur has a predominantly rural population, comprising 82 per cent of the electorate. Hindus form 45 per cent of the population, Muslims 50 per cent, and other religious groups constitute 5 per cent.