Turncoats may be here, there, everywhere in Bengal’s political amphitheatre this poll season, but a 70-year-old man in North Dinajpur proudly announces that come what may, he won’t change his loyalty.
Meet Mohit Sengupta, the sitting Congress MLA of Raiganj, who is reaching out to voters with his credentials of a man of political integrity.
“During the past 10 years, I received a number of proposals, which some people might find alluring, to join another political party. I have never responded to such proposals and have proved my political integrity. At a time when turncoats are faces of both the Trinamul Congress and the BJP, I am here to prove that there is no need to change the party to win elections... If one has the political integrity and delivers on people’s trust, one can easily win elections,” says Sengupta, who is also the North Dinajpur district Congress chief.
Sengupta, who has been in politics for over 45 years, is criss-crossing Raiganj, a name that is synonymous with former Congress leader Priya Ranjan Das Munshi.
“Like A.B.A. Ghani Khan Choudhury in Malda, Raiganj and North Dinajpur are synonymous with Priyoda. I have worked under him for decades and will continue to serve as a Congress worker…. This time, the number of seats we win does not matter here…. what matters is whether I manage to prove my point that people do not like defectors,” the the two-time MLA says with a smile.
For years, the district was known to be a stronghold of the Congress. From Independence till the 2016 Assembly elections, the party had lost the seat only once.
Sengupta, a five-time chairman of Raiganj municipality, is often credited for Priya Ranjan’s victory in the 1999 Lok Sabha polls. In 2003, the Congress bagged the zilla parishad, seven of the nine panchayat samities and all four municipalities in the district.
In 2011, Sengupta contested the Assembly polls and won the Raiganj seat. Trinamul’s rise in the state did affect the Congress as scores of leaders joined Mamata Banerjee’s party and the Congress lost control of the rural bodies. In 2014, Priya Ranjan’s wife Dipa was defeated in the Raiganj Lok Sabha seat.
Sengupta, however, managed to win from Raiganj in the 2016 Assembly elections and his party bagged three of the nine seats in the district. However, in the 2019 general election, the Congress suffered another setback when the BJP bagged the Raiganj Lok Sabha seat.
As Sengupta has thrown his hat into the ring for another battle, political observers think his “political truthfulness” and integrity are his biggest USPs.
Krishna Kalyani, the BJP candidate who is contesting against him, is a turncoat. “His father was a councillor of Forward Bloc…People are well aware that Krishna Kalyani was with Trinamul,” says an observer.
Also, Kanaialal Agarwala (the district Trinamul president), who has been fielded against Sengupta, is the latter’s former party colleague. He had won the Islampur seat on a Congress ticket and later joined Trinamul.
Raiganj will vote on Thursday in the sixth phase of the Assembly polls.
“Questions might be raised whether the Congress can prove itself to be a political force across the state. But in Raiganj, Mohit Sengupta has a name and his integrity keeps him in an advantageous position,” sums up another observer.
