Constituency Watch: Armed with CAA notification, BJP has an edge in Matua-dominated Bangaon

With the Union government recently notifying the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) rules, the BJP’s fortunes are looking bright in the Bangaon Lok Sabha constituency in North 24 Parganas district, which is located close to the India-Bangladesh border in West Bengal.

On March 11, the Centre notified the Citizenship (Amendment) Rules 2024, thus paving the way for enforcing the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which seeks to grant Indian citizenship to persecuted Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Parsis and Christians who came to India from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan before December 31, 2014.

The news triggered celebrations among the members of the Matua community, a backward-class Hindu group which came to West Bengal as refugees from neighbouring Bangladesh, forming a sizable population in the Bangaon Lok Sabha constituency.

Perhaps sensing trouble over the celebrations by the Matua community members, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has been cautioning people against applying on the CAA portal at all her public meetings since then.

She also claimed that applying on the CAA portal would lead to immediate cancellation of citizenship, saying, “We will not accept CAA, NRC or UCC.”

As a counter to Mamata Banerjee’s remarks on CAA, the leader of opposition in the West Bengal Assembly, Suvendu Adhikari, accused the Chief Minister of misleading the people since the CAA aims to “grant citizenship”, and not “take it away”.

The BJP has renominated its sitting MP and Union Minister Shantanu Thakaur from Bangaon, which he won by a margin of 1.10 lakh votes in 2019.

Thakur is pitted against Trinamool Congress’ Biswajit Das, who officially continues to be a BJP legislator from Bagda, one of the seven Assembly constituencies under Bondagon.

After getting elected from Bagda on a BJP ticket in 2021, Das joined the Trinamool but maintained his membership with the state Assembly as a BJP legislator.

Also in the fray from Bangaon is Congress’ Pradip Biswas, who has been fielded as part of the party’s seat-sharing deal with the Left Front.

Other than the Matua voters, there are other factors as well that give Thakur an edge in Bangaon.

Despite Trinamool’s landslide victory in the 2021 Assembly elections, the party was virtually wiped out from the Bangaon Lok Sabha constituency where the BJP won six out of the seven Assembly seats.

Also, Trinamool’s decision to field Biswajit Das has reportedly irked the party’s old-timers from the constituency, who are not ready to accept a ‘turncoat’ leader as their candidate.

The BJP is also raking the issue by questioning the “political morality” of Das for keeping his BJP legislature status intact.

A combination of all these factors seems to be giving a cushion of comfort to Thakur, and keeping him ahead of his competitors.

Bangaon is a post-delimitation constituency formed before the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, where the Trinamool held sway until the 2019 general elections. The party won the seat in 2009, 2015, and in the by-elections held in 2015 before Thakur emerged victorious by a handsome margin, riding the wave of Matua sentiments, in 2019.

Polling will be held in Bangaon in Phase 5 on May 20. The results will be out on June 4.