Hummingbird News Desk
KOLKATA, 5 MARCH: The Trinamul Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee today published list of her party’s candidate for 291 seats, bringing in 46 new faces in a bid to beat the decade-old anti-incumbency. The remaining three seats of the 294 constituencies would be fought by its ally, the Bimal Gurung faction of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM), Miss Banerjee said.
Reaching out to the politically crucial 49 per cent women voters and 30 per cent minority population, the TMC’s list has 50 women and 42 members of the minority community. Besides, Banerjee fielded 79 Scheduled Caste and 17 Scheduled Tribe candidates.
Altogether 28 sitting MLAs, including five ministers, faced the axe because of age factor or poor health.
In Kolkata, three M-MiCs are given tickets to contest from prime Kolkata seats and Jadavpur.
Mamata Banerjee’s own constituency Bhawanipore was allotted to her trusted comrade, Shovandeb Chattopadhyay who was with her from 1 January 1998 to the Bhawanipore seat.
Debasish Kumar MMiC Parks and Gardens was allotted prestigious Rash Behari seat where Shovandeb Chattopadhyay was the sitting MLA.
In Ballygunge, Kasba, sitting MLAs and state ministers Subrata Mukherjee and Javed Ahmed Khan were given tickets. Aroop Biswas, sitting MLA and state minister from Tollygunge will contest from Tollygunge but in Jadavpur where in last election, previous power minister Manish Gupta was defeated by the CPI-M’s Sujan Chakraborty, Miss Banerjee this time fielded in Debabrata (Moloy) Majumdar M-MiC(Conservancy).
Mr Atin Ghosh,M-MiC (health) was fielded in from Cossipore-Belgachhia dropping Mala Saha the sitting MLA.
The party supremo also dropped Smita Bakshi , sitting MLA from Jorasanko and fielded in Vivek Gupta, former MP and chairman Trinamul’s Hindi cell.
The four other sitting MLAs and ministers from Shyampukur, Maniktala, Beliaghata and Entally- Dr Sashi Panja,Sadhan Pandey, Paresh Pal and Swarna Kamal Saha are also fielded in.

In South 24 Parganas, changes are relatively few in compare to North 24 Parganas.
In 31 Assembly seats, in 2016, Trinamul had lost only two seats. In Behala (East) former Mayor Sovan Chatterjee’s wife ,Ratna Chatterjee was fielded in as a candidate as symbol of woman empowerment, said Miss Banerjee.
Partha Chatterjee will contest from Behala (West). She fielded in actress Lovely Moitra in Sonarpur (South) dropping veteran Jinan Mukherjee.
She also dropped her old comrade, Sonali Guha (Bose) from Santgachhia and Shyamal Mondal from.Canning (West) to Basanti.
In Bhangor, Arabul Islam and his men protested against the new candidate, Dr Rizzazul Islam, new candidate in Bhangor.
In North 24 Parganas, there are several changes in the Assembly constituencies where Trinamul sitting MLAs defected to the BJP like Bongoan (North) and South where Shyamal Roy and Alo Rani Sarkar were made new candidates for Bongoan (North) and Bongoan ( South) respectively. In Bagda, last election Trinamul Congress lost.the seat to the Congress and fielded in a new candidate Paritosh Kumar Saha.
But then old faces like Madan Mitra, Tapas Ray, Nirmal Ghosh, Jyotipriya Mullick, Partha Bhowmik, Rathin Ghosh ,Bratya Basu and Chandrima Bhattacharya will contest from Kamarhati, Baranagar,Panihati, Habra, Naihati,Madhyamgram, DumDum ( South) and DumDum.(North) respectively.
Raj Chakraborty, film director is contesting from Barrackpore, where the sitting Trinamul MLA Shilbhadra Dutta defected to BJP.
Manju Basu is contesting from Noapara and in Arjun Singh’s Bhatpara, Mamata Banerjee fielded in Jitendra Shaw.
The major changes have taken.place in Basirhat and Bongoan Parliamentary constituency. In Baduria, KAZI Abdur Rehaman who recently joined Trinamul from Congress was made the candidate. In Amdange,Mustaque Mortaza was fielded in. A new candidate is fielded in Bijpur, Subodh Adhikary instead of Mukul Roy’s son Suvrangshu Roy who defected to BJP.
Another change was surfaced in Jagaddal, Somnath Shyam was made a candidate instead of Parash Dutta.
Kajal Sinha was fielded in in Kardha for Amit Mitra. Both Rajarhat (New Town) and Rajarhat (Gopalpur) will see new faces like Tapas Chatterjee and Aditi Munshi respectively. Sujit Bose will contest from Bidhannagar.
Dr Saptarshi Banerjee will contest Basirhat (South) and Rafiqul Islam Mondal who joined Trinamul from the CPI-M was made the candidate.
In Howrah, there are several changes, new faces are in those constituencies where sitting MLAs defected to BJP. In Balli, Dr Rana Chatterjee, Howrah (North) Gautam Chowdhury, Sibpur, Manoj Tiwari, Howrah(South) Nandita Chowdhury, Sankrail , Priya Paul, Uluberia(East) Bidesh Bose,Amta Sukanta Paul, Jaggatballavpur Sitanath Ghosh, Domjur Kalyanendu Ghosh , and the sitting MLAs in rest of the seat remain unchanged.
Both Cooch Behar and Alipurduar saw almost a sea change in the candidate list.In Cooch Behar, three sitting MLAs Rabindranath Ghosh, Udayan Guha and Benoy Krishna Burman were contesting from Natabari, Dinhata and Cooch Behar (North) respectively.
But a young MLA from Mekhligunj was dropped this time and Paresh Chandra Adhikary.was fielded in his place.District president, Partha Pratim Roy will contest from Sitalkuchi
In Alipurduar, news faces are seen in all four Assembly segments like Leos Kujur, Prashant Lama,Subhas Ray and Rajesh Lakra (Tiger) in Kumargram, Kalchini,Falakata, Madarihat respectively.
Only Saurav Chakroborty district president will contest from his own seat.
In Darjeeling hills, Mamata Banerjee did not field in any candidates but fielded in new candidates in Phansidewa, Choton Kundu,Prof On Prakash Mishra in Siliguri, sprain Malin Ranjan Roy in Matigara-NaxalbariManoy Roy in Mainaguri,Dr P Burman in Jalpaiguri.
In North Dinajpur there are few changes in Hemtabad, Satyajit Burman, Kaliagunj- Tapan Deb Singha in Raigunj Kanaiyalal Agarwal and Mossaraf Hossain in Itahar.
On West Midnapore, three changes Narayangarh, Chandrakona, Garbeta, Suryakanta Atta, Arup Dhara,Uttara Singha.In Jhargram daughter of Naren Hansda, Birbabha Hansda was fielded in Jhargram constituency where sitting MLA passed away due to Covid.
In East Midnapore, there are changes including Nandigram after defection of Suvendu Adhikary and some MLAs to BJP.
In Contai (North) Tarun Kumar Jana, Patashpur ,Uttam Barik, Chandipur,Gul star Shoham Chakraborty, Swapan Naskar(Haldia), Pulak Chakroborty (Mahishadal)Nandigram Mamata Banerjee, Moyna- Dangram Kumar Dolui and Jyotirmoy Kat’s constituency changed to Contai (South). Actress Jun Malia was fielded in Midnapore as the sitting MLA Migrendra Maity passed away.