Kolkata, March 26 (IANS) Panihati Assembly constituency in North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal, otherwise never a high-profile seat in the state’s electoral history, has this time come into sharp focus with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) fielding Ratna Debnath, the mother of the junior doctor of state-run R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata who was raped and murdered within the hospital premises in August 2024, as its candidate from the constituency.
Members of the Debnath family are also voters in the same constituency.
The Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) has fielded its popular youth leader and one of the prominent faces of the movement on the R.G. Kar issue, Kalatan Dasgupta.
The Trinamool Congress has fielded Tirthankar Ghosh, son of sitting MLA and the current Chief Whip of the Trinamool Congress Legislative Party in the West Bengal Assembly, Nirmal Ghosh, who has been a five-time Trinamool Congress legislator from the constituency since 1996, except for one term between 2006 and 2011.
In that sense, Panihati has long been considered a virtual stronghold of the Trinamool Congress, and under normal circumstances, the ruling party’s victory from the seat by a huge margin could have been a foregone conclusion.
However, a negative factor affecting the Trinamool Congress this time — which also prompted the denial of re-nomination to its five-time sitting legislator Nirmal Ghosh — is the manner in which his name got entangled in controversies related to the R.G. Kar rape and murder case.
Ghosh came under scathing criticism not only from opposition parties but also from sections of society after he was accused of taking possession of the victim’s body after the post-mortem, along with his associates, rushing it back to Panihati from Kolkata, and then hurriedly arranging her cremation.
Opposition parties alleged that Ghosh’s actions were prompted by instructions from the ruling party’s high command to prevent a second post-mortem of the body.
Political observers feel that the shadow of that controversy ultimately prompted the party leadership to deny him re-nomination this time and instead nominate his son as the candidate from Panihati.
Political observers also feel that nominating Ghosh’s son was a compulsion for the Trinamool Congress.
“Nirmal Ghosh, being a veteran party leader and elected legislator from Panihati, had full control over the organisational network of the ruling party in the area. So denying his re-nomination could have ignited factionalism within the Trinamool Congress in the area, thus weakening the electoral prospects of the party further. So in a way, replacing Nirmal Ghosh with his son was a face-saving exercise on the part of the Trinamool Congress,” said a city-based political observer.
Amid this, the BJP candidate is expected to gain significantly because of the sympathy wave that first became a national issue and then an international one after the ghastly rape and murder of the junior doctor in August 2024.
The advantage for the CPI-M candidate lies in the image of its nominee Kalatan Dasgupta, who was not only a leading face of the movement against the West Bengal government on the R.G. Kar issue, but also had to languish behind bars for days after being arrested during the agitation on charges of conspiring with ultra-left groups to destabilise the state administration.
–IANS
src/pgh