Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury says open to contesting from Bengal's Baharampur if Congress gives green signal

The former state Congress president won the subsequent four Lok Sabha polls from Baharampur until he was dislodged by TMC-fielded former cricketer Yusuf Pathan in an electoral upset in 2024.

• Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury plans to contest Baharampur assembly seat
• Congress to focus on strongholds in central and north Bengal
• Congress seeks revival against Mamata Banerjee's anti-incumbency

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Senior Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said he would return to legislative politics in West Bengal after a gap of three decades, and wished to contest from the Baharampur assembly seat, subject to the approval of the party high command and its Central Election Committee.

Attributing the limited focus of Congress in the impending elections to its organisational weakness and paucity of time, the 70-year-old former five-time Lok Sabha MP said the party would be revived from its traditional strongholds of central and north Bengal in the upcoming Assembly polls.

Chowdhury won the Nabagram assembly seat in Murshidabad in 1996 and vacated it three years later, following his victory in the 1999 general elections from the Baharampur Lok Sabha constituency.

The former state Congress president won the subsequent four Lok Sabha polls from Baharampur until he was dislodged by TMC-fielded former cricketer Yusuf Pathan in an electoral upset in 2024.

“I am a foot soldier of the Congress and will do whatever the party asks me to. Under the current political circumstances in Bengal, the task is to keep the Congress banner flying high, and that’s why the AICC pursued all senior state leaders to contest the polls. While some agreed, others didn’t. I chose to accept the request,” Chowdhury told PTI in an interview.

Although the Congress, which decided to go solo in Bengal for the upcoming polls after alliance talks with the Left parties failed to take a concrete shape, is yet to formally announce its candidates, he said the party would file nominees in all 294 seats but remain focused on its pockets of strength in Murshidabad, Malda, Dinajpur and parts of Purulia districts.

Chowdhury held that the height of anti-incumbency currently faced by three-term CM Mamata Banerjee and the “absence” of acute religious polarisation prevalent during the 2021 polls gave the Congress a fighting chance in the current elections.

“In 2021, the anti-NRC-CAA wave in the state and the firing on villagers by the central forces in Sitalkhuchi, left a deep divide among Bengal voters along religious lines which Mamata Banerjee encashed to the full and swung votes in her favour in Muslim-majority areas. That reality doesn’t exist in current times,” he said.

The veteran politician claimed that the Sitalkhuchi firing had cost the Congress in north Bengal dearly due to polarisation.

“Mamata also faces serious anti-incumbency sentiments, even among Muslims who have questioned the outcome of her largely optics-based resistance to the SIR and the Waqf amendment law. She also has to handle squabbles within her party. All factors added, the Congress’ recovery chances against TMC are quite high,” Chowdhury added.

Stating that the Congress has “natural edge” over others in countering the “flawed SIR process” in Bengal, he said people have seen through Banerjee’s “clever ploy to yet again polarise voters” over the exercise.

“It was Rahul Gandhi who first exposed the politics behind SIR. In our campaigns, we have a thousand things to say against the exercise which has brought misery to the lives of people. While the BJP has welcomed the process claiming it to be the solution to all problems existing in Bengal, Mamata Banerjee is trying to emerge as the sole challenger to it as a means to counter anti-incumbency,” he said.

Chowdhury said that the Congress would counter Mamata Banerjee’s “opportunistic politics” with an ideological battle as far as countering the SIR exercise was concerned.

“Banerjee donned a lawyer’s gown in the Supreme Court like she had put a bandage around her leg five years ago to win the state elections. It’s all optics and people are aware of her clever ploys,” he said.

Chowdhury claimed that while the TMC kept up its anti-SIR façade, the administration under Banerjee complicated the exercise causing distress to people.

“You think the BLOs, AEROs, EROs and DEOs in Bengal aren’t equipped to handle spell checks of voters’ names or anomalies in surnames? I am more than sure that the Mamata-administration deliberately complicated the problems in this otherwise futile and rubbish exercise so that the CM could keep up her façade of resistance,” he alleged.

He referred to the 61 lakh name deletions in the final electoral rolls in the state besides the over 60 lakh voters remaining under judicial scanner.

“I have consistently maintained that the SIR problems were created under Mamata Banerjee’s instructions because without grassroots difficulties, she doesn’t have a future. Those were generated so that she could reap electoral dividends from them,” Chowdhury added.

Speaking of the Congress fighting the current edition of polls all by itself in the aftermath of the 2016 and 2021 assembly elections which it fought in electoral alliance with the Left, Chowdhury said his party’s re-emergence in Bengal’s political arena, which is currently reduced to a nought in the state assembly, took precedence over alliance talks.

“We could have come together on a common platform if the talks were long-term and meaningful. Post- Sitaram Yechury, the environment in CPI-M seems to have changed. What can be done if the alliance wasn’t forged? Our priority now is to revive the Congress in the state. How it affects others is not our concern,” he said.

“People’s disenchantment with the Mamata government is our greatest capital. The job is to bounce back, especially after my loss in the 2024 general elections. That void must be filled,” he said.