Asansol, West Bengal:
Reopening factories that have been closed for years, tackling drinking water scarcity in rural areas and curbing illegal mining menace in abandoned mines are the key issues facing the people of Asansol Lok Sabha constituency in West Bengal.
The region hosts the mining and industrial belt of the state, with the assembly segments of Raniganj, Pandaveswar and Jamuria hosting coal mines and Kulti being home to some of the larger factories.
Asansol, which borders Jharkhand, has a significant percentage of Hindi-speaking population, mainly migrant workers from Bihar and UP who work in the mines and factories.
While the TMC has fielded Bollywood actor Shatrughan Sinha, aka 'Bihari Babu', as its candidate for this seat, the BJP has settled for veteran leader Surendrajeet Singh Ahluwalia, who was born and brought up in the city.
The CPI(M) has fielded Jahanara Khan, a debutant in the Lok Sabha polls, in the seat that also has a fair number of tribals.
Shatrughan Sinha won the 2022 by-election here by over three lakh votes after BJP MP Babul Supriyo vacated the seat, which he secured in 2014 and 2019, and switched to the TMC.
Shatrughan Sinha expressed confidence about retaining the seat with a bigger margin this time.
“I will get more support from people in the constituency in this election,” he told PTI.
The Left-nominated Khan, a two-time MLA from Jamuria, alleged that neither Mr Sinha nor Mr Supriyo had done much to alleviate the problems of the locals.
“The poorer tribes and minorities in rural areas are suffering from massive drinking water scarcity, but so far little has been done to resolve that crisis,” she said.
She claims that illegal mining from the region's abandoned mines is widespread and the menace must be stopped to prevent land subsidence and mudslides, which claim lives almost every year.
Acknowledging the water crisis in rural areas, TMC's Pandaveswar MLA Narendranath Chakraborty said the water level decreases in the summer months in the mining region, which he said was a “natural occurrence”.
“We are working to provide water to houses, and reservoirs are being built in every block,” he said, adding that water is being supplied through tankers in many places as an emergency measure.
Sambhu Majhi, a resident of Kulti, said he wants factories, which have been closed for years due to issues ranging from “severe unionism” to a lack of timely modernization, to reopen.
“Once the factories are back in operation, our children will not have to migrate in search of livelihood,” he said.
Several well-known factories such as Sen-Raleigh and Asansol Glass have downed their shutters over the years.
According to Ajay Ghosh of Dishergarh, illegal sand mining from Damodar is also increasing and needs to be stopped.
It took a while for the BJP to officially appoint Mr Ahluwalia, fondly called 'Sardarji' by many, to the Asansol seat after Bhojpuri singer Pawan Singh withdrew from the contest.
In the 2019 elections, Mr Ahluwalia won the neighboring Bardhaman-Durgapur seat where the BJP has fielded its former state president Dilip Ghosh this time.
Mr Ahluwalia, also a former Rajya Sabha MP, had won the Darjeeling Lok Sabha seat in northern West Bengal in 2014.
He won the 2019 elections by a narrow margin of 18,540 votes and managed to get his party just one of the seven parliamentary seats in Bardhaman-Durgapur in the 2021 state elections.
Mr Ahluwalia is facing the litmus test of covering up TMC's gains in Asansol, where five of the seven assembly segments went to the Mamata Banerjee-led party in 2021.
At a recent election rally in Kulti, Ms Banerjee attacked Mr Ahluwalia and accused him of playing the disappearing act from Bardhaman-Durgapur for the past five years.
“He could get a ticket for this seat after a lot of effort,” the TMC supremo claimed.
Local BJP leader Jitendra Tiwari claimed that having an experienced campaigner like Mr Ahluwalia in Asansol has boosted the morale of his party's workers to win back the seat.
Pushing aside the TMC allegation of Mr Ahluwalia's absenteeism, Mr Tiwari asked, “How many times have we seen Shatrughan Sinha in Asansol in the last two years?”
Mr Sinha, a two-term BJP MP from Patna Sahib, had joined the Congress ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and switched to the TMC in 2022.
Among his many films, Shatrughan Sinha co-starred with Amitabh Bachchan in 'Kaala Patthar', a 1979 Bollywood hit based on the Chasnala coal mine tragedy in neighboring Dhanbad.
Calling Mr Sinha an 'acting legend', the Pandaveswar MLA said the yesteryear star still has a crazy fan following.
“As an MP, he worked for Asansol and the MPLAD funds were properly utilized for the welfare of people,” he said.
Confident by a formidable margin, Chakraborty said the leader meant business when it came to development and maintained a polite attitude towards people.
Local CPI(M) leader Partha Mukherjee claimed that people would vote against the “ideological bankruptcy of TMC and BJP”.
“All anti-TMC and anti-BJP forces will come together to defeat them and we are sure that Jahanara Khan will win Asansol,” he said.
Asansol will go to the polls in the fourth phase on May 13.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)