Though the Trinamul Congress has managed to win both the two Lok Sabha seats in West Burdwan district – Asansol and Burdwan-Durgapur, but assembly wise the results are similar to the 2021 Assembly polls.

The TMC has taken lead in five assembly seats of Asansol Lok Sabha – Pandaveswar, Jamuria, Raniganj, Asansol North and Barabani, the BJP has taken lead in Asansol South and Kulti assembly segments.

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In Durgapur-Burdwan seat, TMC has taken lead in Durgapur East and the BJP in Durgapur West.

The BJP has won the Durgapur West, Asansol South and Kulti assembly seat in the 2021 Assembly polls in the state and the TMC has won the remaining six seats.

However, the margins of BJP leads have decreased drastically and will be a matter of concern for the saffron brigade before the 2026 next Assembly polls in Bengal.

The TMC candidate Shatrughan Sinha has taken the maximum lead from Pandaveswar assembly seat with 40,025 votes. This is the highest lead margin of the district and the credit went to local MLA and district president of TMC, Narendrnath Chakraborty.

Shatrughan Sinha also got 26,523 votes from Barabani, the Assembly constituency of Asansol Municipal Corporation mayor Bidhan Upadhyay.

In Jamuria, Shatrughan Sinha got a lead of 11,871 votes and from Raniganj took a lead of 4,452 votes, from Asansol North a lead of 4,367 votes.

Incidentally, Raniganj and Asansol North belong to constituencies of two heavyweight TMC leaders Tapas Banerjee, chairman of Asansol Durgapur Development Authority (ADDA) and state law minister Moloy Ghatak.

S S Ahluwalia of the BJP took the lead from Asansol South – 12,157 and from Kulti 15,053 votes, respectively.

Asansol South sitting MLA Agnimitra Paul lost to June Malia of TMC in the Midnapore Lok Sabha seat.

While BJP’s Dilip Ghosh took lead of 11,682 votes in Durgapur West assembly seat and TMC’s Kirti Azad took lead of 1,693 votes from Durgapur East assembly seat.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, S S Ahluwalia took the lead of whopping 49,511 votes in Durgapur West seat and 26,591 votes lead from the Durgapur East assembly seat over the TMC candidate.

The BJP has won both Asansol and Durgapur Burdwan Lok sabha seats in 2019.

The TMC, however wrested the Asansol Lok Sabha seat from BJP in the 2022 bypoll.

The main reasons behind the dipping of BJP votes are massive distress amongst the workers of the heavy industries in Asansol Durgapur belt. Most of the workers of Asansol Durgapur belt are directly or indirectly related to the central public sector steel plants, coal mines and other central public sector production units like CLW.

A number of central public sector industries have also closed but despite having MPs of the ruling BJP there has been no efforts to revive the ailing and reopen the closed units like MAMC, HFCL, BOGL, Hindustan Cables etc.

Durgapur has traditionally been a bastion of the Left Front, in the Lok Sabha polls unlike in the 2019 polls, a large chunk of the Left Front voters have returned due to extensive campaigning of the Left candidates, Jhanara Khan and Professor Sukrit Ghoshal.

TMC MP Kirti Azad has already promised to take up the issue of industrial revival at the centre of the Durgapur industrial belt.