The Trinamul Congress has appointed recently-inducted leader Pankaj Roy Sarkar as the observer of Durgapur West seat in a bid to wrest the seat from the clutches of the BJP in the 2026 Assembly polls.

The Assembly-wise list of TMC observers in Burdwan West district has been released in which it states that Pankaj Roy Sarkar has been appointed as the observer of Durgapur West seat.

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Pankaj Roy Sarkar has joined the Trinamul Congress recently through local minister Pradip Majumdar and chairman of ADDA, Kabi Dutta. He is an immensely popular leader and had organisational skills, but recently left the Marxist party and joined the TMC.

So far, he has not been given any serious job or any post since his joining of the Trinamul Congress.

With this new appointment, it is now clear that the TMC is trying to use his organisational skills to wrest the seat from the BJP in the 2026 elections.

The TMC has lost the Durgapur West seat twice, in 2016 and in the 2021 Assembly polls.

Biswanath Pariwal, the left-supported Congress candidate has defeated the official TMC candidate Apurba Mukherjee in the Assembly polls, but himself has later joined the TMC. Though the TMC had fielded Biswanath Pariwal as the official party candidate in the 2021 polls, Lakhsman Ghorui of the BJP defeated him.

The names of twenty one observers of TMC for the nine Assembly seats of West Burdwan district have been released by district president Narendranath Chakraborty.

It also includes two ministers, Moloy Ghatak (Asansol North), Pradip Majumdar (Durgapur East) and three sitting MLAs, Tapas Banerjee (Raniganj), Bidhan Upadhyay (Barabani), Hareram Singh (Jamuria) and Narendrnath Chakraborty (Pandaveswar). In the 2021 assembly polls the TMC lost the Kulti, Asansol South and Durgapur West assembly seat while winning the Asansol North, Barabani, Jamuria, Raniganj, Pandaveswar and Durgapur East Assembly seats.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls too the TMC trailed the BJP in both the Durgapur East and Durgapur West Assembly seats under the Durgapur–Burdwan Lok Sabha seat. In 2025, the key Durgapur Municipal Corporation (DMC) polls are also likely to be held and ahead of the election the appointments of the party observers seems very significant. Anindita Mukherjee, Biswanath Pariwal and Prabhat Chattterjee, the local TMC leaders of Durgapur are also appointed as observers.