The BJP on Wednesday declared Surendrajeet Singh Ahluwalia as the candidate for the Asansol Lok Sabha segment, over a month after the party had withdrawn Bhojpuri singer Pawan Singh from the seat.

Ahluwalia will take on the Trinamul Congress’s current MP and actor Shatrughan Sinha.

Singh had to pull out of the Asansol fray following strong criticism by the Trinamul Congress of his misogynist lyrics targeting Bengali women.

The main Opposition party in Bengal is yet to announce the name of its candidate
for Diamond Harbour against Trinamul national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee.

Mocking the BJP’s organisation strength, Trinamul spokesperson Kunal Ghosh said: “Although they finally chose the Asansol candidate, they failed to find a face to contest in Diamond Harbour. We expect that they would come up with a candidate developed through AI (artificial intelligence).”

Ahluwalia had been elected as an MP from Darjeeling in 2014 and Burdwan-Durgapur in 2019.

Although the BJP leadership officially claimed Ahluwalia was a good nominee for Asansol, a section of party leaders in Asansol expressed their displeasure.

“He won the last election from the Durgapur-Burdwan seat with a narrow margin
of 2,439 votes. He does not have a good track record as he hardly visited his
earlier constituencies after winning elections and that is why he was not renominated from Burdwan-Durgapur,” said a BJP leader in Asansol.

A source said after the BJP had to withdraw Singh within 24 hours of announcing his name, the party was in search of a candidate for Asansol.

Babul Supriyo, the former Union minister, who is currently with Trinamul, won from Asansol twice — in 2014 and 2019 — on BJP tickets.

After Singh’s episode, there was a buzz that the BJP would field the former Asansol mayor Jitendra Tiwari, who defected from Trinamul, against Sinha. “After several considerations, the party found that old-timers in the BJP would not pitch in if Tiwari was chosen. Then, the party decided on Ahluwalia,” said a BJP insider.

“The elderly party leader was a son of Asansol and his brother-in-law Tapas Banerjee is Trinamul MLA from Raniganj, which includes the Lok Sabha seat. That is why fielding Ahluwalia ji was a right choice,” said a BJP leader.

Trinamul leaders said the BJP had made Asansol an easy game for them as they would highlight his poor performance in the Burdwan-Durgapur seat, which is adjacent to Asansol.

“We are not taking Ahluwalia ji lightly as he won earlier elections. But it would help us increase the margin of victory as we will highlight his unimpressive performance in
his earlier constituency,” said Narendranath Chakraborty, the Pandabeswar MLA of
Trinamul.