Kolkata, Oct 31 (IANS) As the Taldangra Assembly constituency in Bankura district is going for bypolls on November 13, the Trinamool Congress candidate is clearly at an advantageous position over his nearest competitors.

Taldangra is going for bypolls since the erstwhile Trinamool Congress legislator from there, Arup Chakraborty got elected as a Lok Sabha MP in the General Elections earlier this year.

The Trinamool Congress this time has fielded a local youth face and party organisational man Falguni Singhababu.

His nearest contestants are the BJP’s Ananya Roy Chakraborty, the CPI(M)’s Debkanti Mahanti and the Congress’ Tusharkanti Sannigrahi.

What has given the Trinamool Congress some extra oxygen at Taldangra before the bypolls is that around 200 active members from both the BJP and CPI(M) camps have joined the ruling party expressing solidarity towards Singhababu.

However, there is also a factor which has kept the Trinamool Congress a bit worried, and that is the possibility of transfer of dedicated Left votes in favour of the BJP candidate in the bypolls.

Earlier this month, state law minister M Ghatak cautioned that he had got definite information that there had been a clandestine and ground-level understanding between the BJP and CPI(M) at Taldangra.

Ghatak also asked his party workers at Taldangra to be careful about this vote transfer.

Since 1977, the year of the beginning of the 34- year Left Front rule in West Bengal till 2016, Taldangra had been a virtual red bastion as CPI(M) candidates got elected from there, eight-consecutive times.

Even in 2011, the year which marked the end of the Left Front rule and the beginning of the Trinamool Congress’ regime, the CPI(M) candidate from Taldangra got elected by a margin of over 7,000 votes.

However, the power equation changed in 2016 for the first time when the Trinamool Congress’ Samir Chakraborty got elected from there.

In 2021, the Trinamool Congress’ Arup Chakraborty, currently the party Lok Sabha member from Bankura constituency, got elected from Taldangra.

Basically a rural constituency with 1,80,000 voters, the main occupation of the people of the constituency is agriculture.