Former Couple Sujata Mondal Vs Saumitra Khan Against Each Other In Bishnupur (Image: X/@SUJATAAITC)
Sujata Mondal is one of the 42 candidates of Trinamool Congress (TMC), the ruling party in West Bengal, who has been fielded in Bishnupur constituency. The election here is going to be one of the most interesting as Mondal is going to fight against her former husband and BJP MP Saumitra Khan. Bishnupur will see elections on May 25 (phase 6).
Noticeably, both parted ways over the ideological differences in 2020. In 2019, elections Sujata Mondal campaigned for Khan when the High Court ordered Saumitra Khan not to enter the constituency in connection to a pending criminal case against him. However, this time, Sujata Mondal will campaign for herself in the same constituency.
On one hand, being a daughter of the soil, Sujata Mondal is claiming to fight against injustice in the constituency whereupon Saumitra Khan is confident to win by over three lakh votes as he claimed to be known to the people from 2006. However, Sujata is already familiar with the constituency as she had campaigned here in the last general elections. Additionally, the contest for BJP here is not going to be a cakewalk as its influential MLA Harakali Protiher, who was Bishnupur BJP president for 2018-2021, from Katulpur joined Trinamool. He said that a larger section of BJP party members in the constituency are unhappy with Saumitra Khan.
Sujata joined the TMC in 2020 and ran for the state assembly seat from Arambagh constituency. She courted controversy by making a derogatory remark about the SC community. She later became chief of the Bankura district council.
A Scheduled Caste reserved constituency, Bishnupur was once a stronghold of the Left and for the past three consecutive elections, it has seen three different parties come to power. In 2019, BJP secured 46.7 percent of votes while TMC won 41.2 percent of votes. BJP retained its influence in the 2021 state assembly elections as 5 of the 7 assembly seats were won by the saffron party.
The SC, ST, and Muslim populations in the constituency are 31.95 percent, 9.73 percent, and 9.89 percent respectively. The literacy rate of the constituency is 62.93 percent. Out of the total population, 77 percent is rural and 23 percent is urban population. In the last Lok Sabha elections, the voter turnout was 81.81 percent whereas in the assembly elections, it was 85.72 percent.
