Nisith Pramanik vs Udayan Guha: All eyes on Coochbehar as 3 seats go to polls in Bengal

All eyes are on Coochbehar as three seats of North Bengal go to polls in the first phase on Friday (April 19). In Coochbehar, BJP's sitting MP and Union Minister Nisith Pramanik is squaring off with Jagadish Chandra Barma Basunia. Two other seats where elections will be held in the first phase are Jalpaiguri and Alipurduars.         

In Coochbehar, Pramanik is taking on TMC's Basunia, but the real battle seems to be between Pramanik and Dinhata MLA Udayan Guha, who are engaged in a war of words for quite some time, news agency PTI said. Sporadic clashes between the supporters of the two parties have occurred in the run-up to the elections.  

Pramanik was earlier with Mamata Banerjee's TMC but he joined the BJP after the 2018 panchayat polls in Bengal. The long-standing rivalry between Pramanik and TMC's Dinhata MLA and North Bengal Development Minister Udayan Guha seems to have contributed greatly to the tension in Coochbehar over the elections. 

The rivalry between the duo began after Pramanik, following differences with the party's district leadership, fielded a number of candidates in the 2018 panchayat polls as independents and several of them had won. This led to Pramanik's expulsion from TMC and his rivalry with Udayan Guha.

Guha was the Forward Bloc MLA from Dinhata before he joined the TMC in 2015. He won on a TMC ticket from the constituency next year, but was defeated by Pramanik in the 2021 elections by only 57 votes. After Pramanik decided to vacate the seat for his Lok Sabha membership, Guha won again in a bypoll from Dinhata. Pramanik and Guha are residents of Dinhata, a small mofussil town less than 20 kms from the Indo-Bangladesh border. 

In 2019, Nisith Pramanik defeated TMC's Paresh Chandra Adhikary by over 50,000 votes in Coochbehar. 

Jalpaiguri and Alipurduars are the other two constituencies that will go to polls in the first of the seven-phase elections in West Bengal, which has 42 Lok Sabha seats. 

The death of four people in firing allegedly by central forces in Sitalkuchi during the 2021 assembly elections has also been made an issue by the TMC in the current election. Both Sitalkuchi and Dinhata are assembly segments within the Coochbehar Lok Sabha constituency which shares its southern and western borders with Bangladesh. 

The EC is deploying 112 companies of central forces along with 4,500 state police in Cooch Behar, almost double compared to the forces deployed in the other two constituencies, which have remained more or less peaceful during the campaign period. In view of the death of four people in a firing allegedly by CISF personnel at a booth in Sitalkuchi during the 2021 assembly polls, the EC has decided not to deploy any personnel of that force there. 

The poll panel has decided to deploy 2,454 state police personnel alongside 63 companies of central forces in Alipurduars. There will be 75 companies of central forces and 3,077 state police in Jalpaiguri. 

In the 2021 assembly polls, Coochbehar and Alipurduars remained BJP's stronghold with the party winning five of seven segments in the first and six in the second constituency. In Jalpaiguri, the TMC had the upper hand, winning five and the saffron party managed to win two. The BJP has renominated Jayanta Roy in Jalpaiguri and Pramanik in Cooch Behar, but replaced last time's winner John Barla with the party's Madarihat MLA Manoj Tigga in Alipurduars. 

The TMC has, however, changed candidates in all three seats, fielding Prakash Chik Baraik in Alipurduars, Nirmal Chandra Roy in Jalpaiguri and Sitai MLA Basunia in Coochbehar. The Left Front and the Congress party are fighting in a seat-sharing alliance in the state in the 2024 elections. 

(With inputs from PTI)