In West Bengal's Asansol, it's TMC's 'Bihari Babu' vs BJP's 'Sardarji'

Asansol: Reopening factories closed for years, addressing drinking water scarcity in rural pockets and reining in the illegal mining menace in abandoned collieries are the primary issues for the people of Asansol Lok Sabha constituency in West Bengal.

The region cradles the mining and industrial belt of the state, with Raniganj, Pandaveswar and Jamuria assembly segments housing coal mines and Kulti serving as the home to some of the bigger factories.

Asansol, which borders Jharkhand, has a significant percentage of the Hindi-speaking population, mostly migrant workers from Bihar and UP employed in the mines and factories.

While the TMC has repeated Bollywood superstar Shatrughan Sinha aka 'Bihari Babu' as its candidate for this seat, the BJP settled for its veteran leader Surendrajeet Singh Ahluwalia who was born and raised in the city.

The CPI(M) has fielded Jahanara Khan, a debutant in Lok Sabha polls, in the seat that is also home to a fair number of tribals.

Sinha won the 2022 by-elections here by over 3 lakh votes after BJP MP Babul Supriyo vacated the seat, which he secured in 2014 and 2019, and switched over to the TMC.

Sinha expressed confidence about retaining the seat by a greater margin this time.

"I will win more support from people in the constituency this election," he told PTI.

Left nominee Khan, a two-time MLA from Jamuria, alleged that neither Sinha nor Supriyo had done much to alleviate the problems of the locals.

"The poorer tribals and minorities in the rural areas are suffering from tremendous drinking water scarcity, but little has been done so far to solve that crisis," she said.

Alleging that illegal mining from the abandoned collieries in the region is rampant, she said the menace must be stopped to prevent land subsidence and mudslides which claim lives almost every year.

Acknowledging the rural water crisis, TMC's Pandaveswar MLA Narendranath Chakraborty said water level depletes in the summer months in the mine region which, he maintained, was a "natural occurrence".

"We are working towards providing water connection to homes, and reservoirs are being built in every block," he said, adding that water gets supplied through tankers in many places as a stop-gap measure.

Sambhu Majhi, a resident of Kulti, said that he wanted factories, which have been closed for years over issues ranging from "militant trade unionism" to lack of timely modernisation, reopened.

"If the factories are back in operation, our children will not have to migrate in search of livelihood," he said.

Several well-known factories like those of Sen-Raleigh and Asansol Glass have downed their shutters over the years.

According to Ajay Ghosh of Dishergarh, illegal sand mining from Damodar is also on the rise and needs to be stopped.

The BJP took a while to officially name Ahluwalia, fondly called 'Sardarji' by many, for the Asansol seat after Bhojpuri singer Pawan Singh stepped aside from the contest.

In the 2019 elections, Ahluwalia won the neighbouring Bardhaman-Durgapur seat, where the BJP has fielded its former state president Dilip Ghosh this time.

Ahluwalia, also a former Rajya Sabha MP, had won the Darjeeling Lok Sabha seat in northern West Bengal in 2014.

He won the 2019 elections by a slender margin of 18,540 votes and managed to deliver for his party only one out of the seven assembly seats in Bardhaman-Durgapur during the 2021 state polls.

Ahluwalia faces the litmus test of obfuscating TMC's gains in Asansol, where five out of seven assembly segments went to the Mamata Banerjee-led party in 2021.

During a recent election rally in Kulti, Banerjee took a dig at Ahluwalia and accused him of playing the vanishing act from Bardhaman-Durgapur during the last five years.

"He could manage to get a ticket for this seat after putting in much effort," the TMC supremo claimed.

Local BJP leader Jitendra Tiwari claimed that having an experienced campaigner like Ahluwalia in Asansol has boosted the morale of his party's workers to reclaim the seat.

Brushing aside the TMC allegation of Ahluwalia's absenteeism, Tiwari asked, "That way, how many times did we see Shatrughan Sinha in Asansol in the last two years?" A two-term BJP MP from Patna Sahib, Sinha had joined the Congress ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and switched over to the TMC in 2022.

Among his many films, Sinha had co-starred with Amitabh Bachchan in 'Kaala Patthar', a 1979 Bollywood hit based on the Chasnala coal mine tragedy in neighbouring Dhanbad.

Calling Sinha an "acting legend", the Pandaveswar MLA said the star of yesteryears still commands a crazy fan following.

"As an MP, he worked for Asansol and MPLAD funds were properly utilised for the welfare of people," he said.

Confident about a formidable margin, Chakraborty said the leader meant business when it came to development and maintained a polite demeanor with people.

Local CPI(M) leader Partha Mukherjee claimed that people would vote against the "ideological bankruptcy of TMC and BJP".

"All anti-TMC and anti-BJP forces will come together to defeat them and we are sure that Jahanara Khan will win Asansol," he said.

Asansol goes to polls in the fourth phase on May 13.