Kolkata, Feb 2 (IANS) Former heavyweight member of the West Bengal cabinet, Jyotipriya Mallick, an accused in the PDS irregularities case, who was in jail after being arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED), wants to contest from a different Assembly constituency.
Mallick is currently a Trinamool Congress legislator from the Habra constituency in North 24 Parganas district, from where he was elected for three consecutive terms in 2011, 2016, and 2021. Earlier, he was a two-time Trinamool Congress legislator in 2001 and 2006 from the adjacent Gaighata constituency in the same district.
On Monday, while expressing his desire to contest from a different constituency in the Assembly elections scheduled this year, Mallick also reminded that a change of constituency is nothing new for him.
“Due to the requirements of the time, I moved from Gaighata to Habra. Now, again for the requirement of time, I might have to move from Habra to any other Assembly constituency,” Mallick said.
Political observers feel that the real reason behind Mallick’s desire to contest from a different constituency lies in the statistics of Habra in the last three elections, namely the 2019 and 2024 Lok Sabha elections and 2021 West Bengal Assembly elections.
In 2021, Mallick was elected from Habra, one of the seven Assembly constituencies under the Barasat Lok Sabha constituency, but with an extremely thin margin of just 3,841 votes.
However, the Assembly-wise results from Habra were totally revised both in the 2019 and 2024 Lok Sabha elections. In 2019, Habra gave a lead of 20,000 to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate from the Barasat Lok Sabha in 2019. In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP candidate from Barasat was leading from Habra Assembly by a little less than 20,000 votes.
State committee member of BJP, Tapas Mitra, ridiculed the indirect desire of Mallick not to contest from Habra this time and said that the former state food & supplies and then state forest minister was trying to find an escape route in advance after being sure of a landslide defeat from Habra this time.
“However, wherever he will contest, people will reject him. No one will vote for a leader who was behind bars for ration distribution corruption. Trinamool Congress’s departure from power is imminent this time,” Mitra added.
–IANS
src/dpb