KOLKATA: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Tuesday named 13 more candidates in its fourth list for the West Bengal Assembly elections in April, including Union Minister of State and Matua Dalit community leader Shantanu Thakur’s wife Soma Thakur, and a Congress MP from Kolkata.
With this, the BJP has nominated 287 candidates for the 294-member state assembly election race.
Tuesday’s list, which includes only one woman, Suma Thakur, and three candidates from Scheduled Castes, came days after the BJP nominated 274 candidates in three lists published in phases since March 16.
In the two-phase elections on April 23-29, Suma Thakur will contest from the North 24 Parganas district seat, a Matua stronghold, in the second date against her cousin and MLA Mahoparna Thakur, a Trinamool Congress candidate and daughter of ruling party’s Rajya Sabha member Mamata Bala Thakur.
“The people have made up their minds. The BJP will not only win Baghdad but also a majority of seats in West Bengal,” Suma Thakur said after her name was announced.
BJP’s Biswas Das won the Baghdad seat in 2021 but later joined the TMC without resigning from the BJP. Madhuparna Thakur won the seat in the 2024 by-election held after Das resigned to unsuccessfully contest the Lok Sabha elections against Shantanu Thakur.
Union minister Subrata Thakur’s brother won the district’s Jayghatta assembly seat in 2021 and is seeking re-election.
Santosh Pathak, the lone Congress councilor in the Kolkata Municipal Corporation, joined the BJP on March 23 amid speculation that he might participate in the Assembly elections.
“BJP is the only party that can end the corrupt TMC government,” said Pathak, who will contest from Kolkata’s Chowringhi seat won by Naina Bandopadhyay, wife of TMC Lok Sabha member Sudeep Bandopadhyay, in the 2014 poll, and in 2016 and 2021.
