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North 24 Parganas, WB
Located in the southern part of West Bengal, North 24 Parganas district is famous for being the birthplace of Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay who is the writer of the national song of India 'Bande Mataram'. It is also India's most populous district since 2014.
The district comprises 5 Lok Sabha seats and one of them is Barasat, which also houses the district headquarter, who's voters have been electing the Trinamool Congress (TMC) for the last three elections. The party's Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar has been the MP from here since the 2009 General Elections.
This time, in 2024, TMC has renominated Dastidar from Barasat while BJP has fielded Swapan Majumder, who is presently a member of the state's Legislative Assembly.
In the past two elections, the constituency has witnessed a four-way contest with Congress and Left Front's All India Forward Bloc (AIFB) fielding their candidates too. However, this time Congress is in alliance with the Left Front, therefore, AIFB's Sanjib Chatterjee will be representing the alliance from here.
In 2019, TMC won by a margin of over 100,000 votes with BJP's Mrinal Kanti Debnath being the runner-up. However, in 2014, TMC won by a margin of over 150,000 votes and this time the runner up was AIFB's Mortaza Hossain. In both these elections, Congress candidates managed only around 40,000 votes.
Historically, AIFB has been the most successful party from Barasat LS seat since 1957 as it has won 6 times while TMC has won it on five occasions. Congress has managed to win it thrice and CPI has won it twice.
It is worthy to mention that the constituency is a stronghold of TMC as the party won all seven Assembly segments that fall under the Barasat LS seat in the 2021 West Bengal Assembly elections.
According to estimates, the seat has a good presence of Dalits at almost 22% while the Muslim population is over 1/4th of the total population.
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