Sukanta Majumdar To Run Election From Balurghat On BJP TicketSukanta Majumdar, the sitting BJP MP from Balurghat, West Bengal, has got the party ticket to run for the upcoming elections on April 26. Majumdar is the 10th state president of BJP, West Bengal. TMC has fielded Biplab Mitra against him.
Majumdar has obtained PhD degree in Botany from the University of North Bengal and is a professor at the University of Gour Banga. During his tenure in the Lower House of Parliament, Majumdar registered 73 percent attendance. He participated in 47 debates on education, pension, transportation, agriculture, and Rohingya refugees in the house and asked a total of 654 questions. Sukanta Majumdar has also been a member of the standing committee on Information Technology and Committee of Petitions since 2019.
Majumdar has long been associated with the RSS and defeated Arpita Ghosh of TMC in Balurghat with a margin of 33,293 votes, who won the 2014 elections from the constituency.
Party insiders believe that the low profile of Sukanta Majumdar and his educational profile have played a big role in his party presidency. By choosing him, BJP has tried to strengthen its grip over North Bengal for the future.
In the past, Sukanta Majumdar has created controversy with his comments which were not very well taken by the Opposition. In one of the events, Majumdar said, “Bengal had been the cradle of Bhakti movement, Bengal had espoused ‘Sanatan dharma’ for ages but got derailed from the track for some time due to the Leftists. Those who rate football games higher than Gita are all Leftist products, they prove a little learning is a dangerous thing.”
On people defecting from the parties he commented at an event, “If we want to take rotten potatoes from Trinamool, we will first purify them by consuming Ganges water, dung, cow urine. Then we will take them to the party.” While attacking Mamata Banerjee’s government’s education policy, he asked people to slap the chief minister, which was condemned by the TMC.
As per the official statistics, literacy rate of the constituency is 62.5 percent. It has a significant percentage of SC and ST voters with 28.6% and 15.3% as per the 2011 census. The Muslim votes are 29.5%. The rural voters are around 89.3% and 10.7% urban voters as per the 2011 census.
In a recent event, Bijin Krishna, District Election Officer and District Magistrate, South Dinajpur, informed that 36 booths of Balurghat Lok Sabha constituency are going to be fully crewed entirely by women in the 2024 Lok Sabha election.