Medinipur election result: Can BJP president Dilip Ghosh breach Mamata Banerjee’s citadel?

Medinipur Lok Sabha election result 2019: Medinipur parliamentary constituency is one of the most prestigious among the 42 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has fielded its state president Dilip Ghosh from the seat. Ghosh faced TMC candidate Dr Manas Bhuniya. An MLA from Kharagpur Sadar, Ghosh is contesting the Lok Sabha poll for the first time while his rival TMC’s Bhuniya is a sitting Rajya Sabha MP. The other contesting candidates from this Lok Sabha seat are Congress’ Sambhunath Chatterjee and Biplab Bhatt of CPI (M). The voting for this seat was held in the sixth phase on May 12, 2019, while the result will be declared on May 23, 2019.

Lok Sabha Election 2019: Full Coverage

In the 2014 general elections, TMC’s Sandhya Roy defeated CPI’s (Communist Party of India) Prabodh Panda and polled more than 5,79,860 votes in his favour while Panda secured around 3,95,194 votes. The other candidates in the fray were BJP’s Prabhakar Tewari, Congress’ Dr Bimal Kumar Raj, SUCI’s Tushar Jana and others.

The Medinipur Lok Sabha constituency was the stronghold of CPI(M) from 1980 to 2009. In 2014, riding on Mamata Banerjee’s wave in the state, Sandhya Roy won the election. There are seven assembly constituencies which fall under the Medinipur parliamentary seat – Egra, Kharagpur Sadar, Medinipur, Dantan, Narayangarh, Keshiary and Kharagpur. Except Kharagpur Sadar, all other constituencies were won by TMC in the 2016 state assembly elections. The agenda of ‘development’ was the key issue in the 2016 assembly election.

In the previous general elections, there were 14,99,673 registered voters of which 7,70,363 were male and 7,29,310 were female. The voter turnout in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections was 84.02 per cent. The poll battle in Medinipur parliamentary constituency is a prestige fight for BJP as its state president is contesting from this constituency.

Ghosh was a former RSS in-charge of Andaman and Nicobar Islands. He became the BJP West Bengal president in 2015. His rival candidate Bhuniya is a Congress-turned-Trinamool leader.

The area has also had its fair share of violence in the recent past. On May 07, 2019, a convoy of Assam Finance Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma and Dilip Ghosh was allegedly attacked in East Medinipur’s Khejuri area. Both were returning from a road show in support of party’s Lok Sabha candidate in Kanthi parliamentary seat Debasish Samanta. Both BJP and TMC are engaged in a fierce battle in the state as the saffron party is trying its best to grab at least 20 to 22 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal.