KOLKATA: The bypolls to Dhupguri Assembly constituency slated to be held on Tuesday in presence of 30,000 central force personnel appears to be a litmus test for the BJP ahead of the next year’s Lok Sabha election as the segment falls under the saffron camp’s north Bengal turf. It is where the party made deep inroads in the 2019 general elections and performed impressively in the high-octane Assembly polls two years ago.
When the BJP snatched the seat from the ruling TMC in 2021, CM Mamata Banerjee’s party seems to be desperate to regain the constituency. The constituency on Tuesday will witness an aggressive electoral battle between the TMC, BJP and alliance between the CPM and the Congress in the agriculture-based Dhupguri. TMC’s former MLA Mitali Roy defected to the BJP on Sunday, 24 hours after she welcomed Mamata’s nephew and TMC’s national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee on a dais.
“We bagged seven out of eight Lok Sabha seats in north Bengal in 2019. Our party also secured victory in 30 Assembly seats out of 54 in the 2021 Assembly polls. But our performance was not satisfactory in the recently concluded panchayat elections. So, the bypoll to Dhupguri is a tough test for us which we need to win,” said a senior BJP leader in Kolkata. In 2021, the BJP secured 45.65 per cent votes and won the seat with a thin margin of around 4,000 votes which makes the party not confident about its victory in the by-election.