Birbhum West Bengal Lok Sabha Elections 2024: Voting date, results, candidates, main parties, and schedule 

West Bengal Lok Sabha Election 2024- (Photo-PTI)

The Birbhum constituency in West Bengal is one of the 42 Lok Sabha constituencies in the state and goes to polls on May 13. This seat was reserved for Scheduled Castes from 1962 to 2004, but was declared an open seat in the 2009 general elections.

The Birbhum parliamentary seat includes seven Assembly constituencies: Hansan, Suri, Rampurhat, Nalhati, Dubrajpur, Murarai and Saithia.

The Trinamool Congress Party (TMC) has fielded a sitting Member of Parliament and actor Satabdi Roy from the Birbhum Lok Sabha seat. Roy has won the last two Lok Sabha elections from the Birbhum Lok Sabha seat, defeating Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Dudh Kumar Mandal in 2019, and the Communist Party of India’s [CPI(M)s] Dr. Mohammad Kamar Ilahi in 2014.

The BJP had first nominated Debashish Dhar, an Indian Police Services (IPS) Officer, from the constituency, however, Dhar’s candidature was cancelled last week by the district election office citing technical grounds. The BJP then nominated senior party leader Debtanu Bhattacharya in his place.

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Dhar, the former superintendent of police of Coochbehar, was suspended after the 2021 West Bengal Assembly elections, during which four people were killed in Sitalkuchi in the district in alleged firing by central forces. Dhar had recently resigned from the IPS and joined the BJP.

The BJP's new candidate, Debtanu Bhattacharya, is a former pracharak of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and cluster in charge of the Rarh region in the state.

BJP's Dudh Kumar Mondal, who was the BJP candidate in the last Lok Sabha elections, is not in the fray this year as he was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation in 2022 in a money laundering case in West Bengal and is currently lodged in Delhi's Tihar jail.

Election issues for the BJP include law and order, corruption, atrocities against women, and the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, or CAA.