Can Asansol break the trend in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections?

Since 1957, all seven winning candidates have recorded back-to-back election victories. Shatrughan Sinha, former Bollywood superstar has won by over three lakh margin in the 2022 by election. Asansol will go to polls on 13 May.

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Shatrughan Sinha is once again contesting on a Trinamul Congress ticket and in fact he was the first candidate whose name was announced long back by TMC chairperson Mamata Banerjee and due to that he has a clear advantage of starting campaigning much earlier than his six other opponents. He has been working very hard campaigning in the colliery belts with his popularity after his film Kala Patthar and Kalka were shown at evening shows as TMC had organized special screenings of his films in the coal heartland of the state.

Total seven candidates are in the fray for the prestigious Asansol Lok Sabha seat, but it will be mainly a triangular contest between Shatrughan Sinha of the Trinamul Congress, Surendrajeet Singh Ahluwalia of the BJP and Jahanara Khan of the CPM.

Asansol, was once a bastion of the Left, but in this election Jahanara Khan, the former MLA of Jamuria has an uphill task to stop the switching over of the Left vote to the BJP and retain back.

In the 2014 elections and in the 2019 Lok sabha polls too, the Left vote shifted towards the BJP.

Jahanara Khan has been working hard campaigning despite the extreme summer conditions throughout the constituency and hopes to retain her vote bank as majority of workers in the colliery and steel plants are unhappy and feel insecure of privatization of these nationalized assets in the coming days.

The biggest surprise has come from PM Narendra Modi, for the first time in the past 10 years he has not come for election campaigning in Asansol Lok Sabha seat. His election campaigns not only gave a swing in the constituency but also in the surrounding constituencies.

“I want Babul in Parliament”, his famous quote while campaigning in Polo Ground in 2014, Babul Supriyo had won the election and later became an Union minister. He again campaigned in 2019 and Babul Supriyo expanded his winning margin nearly to two lakh votes. But after he quit from the party and joined TMC, the BJP has lost much of its shine.

In fact in 2014, the BJP has won only two seats from the state, Asansol and Darjeeling, but the seat of Asansol has been won by its own credit as the Darjeeling seat winning credit went to its Gorkha ally.

CM Mamata Banerjee has already campaigned twice and Abhisekh Banerjee held roadshows for the TMC candidate, while Union home minister Amit Shah, actor Manoj Tiwari and others campaigned for the BJP. But the missing PM this elections can certainly hit the BJP hard as Shatrughan Sinha hopes to win the votes of the several thousands of colliery workers, steel plant workers, employees of nationalised banks, LIC, railways, who fear amalgamation and privatization.

The work of Asansol railway station redevelopment has started, but the modernization of IISCO Steel Plant in Burnpur is yet to be approved by the cabinet committee on economic affairs, headed by PM Narendra modi.

Surendrajit Singh Ahluwalia, who was born in J K Nagar, near Asansol, where once upon a time the aluminium factory used to be bustling, is the BJP candidate but has maintained hardly any links with his home turf for the past few decades.

He contested the 1996 Lok Sabha polls on a Congress ticket from Asansol and came third after the CPM and the TMC and after 28 years the ‘son of the soil’ is back again contesting with a BJP ticket this time, but the former Union minister, whose constituency has been changed for the third time in a row in the past 10 years is finding it tough.