Veteran Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury on Thursday hinted at returning to the West Bengal legislative politics after around three decades and said that he may contest the upcoming assembly elections in the state from the Baharampur seat if the party decides to field him.
"I am a foot soldier of the party. If the party wants me to contest the elections, then I will surely do it. All our senior leaders have been instructed that we should contest elections," the 70-year-old former Lok Sabha MP said during a press briefing in Baharampur.
Chowdhury had first contested the West Bengal assembly polls in 1991 from the Nabagram constituency in the Murshidabad district, but lost to CPI(M) leader Sisir Kumar Sarkar by a margin of around 1,400 votes. He contested from Nabagram again in 1996 and won after he received more than 76,000 votes. Although he had vacated the seat three years later in 1999 to contest the general elections that year from the Berhampore constituency.
Since then, the veteran Congressman has won this constituency five times. He had contested from Berhampore again in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, but lost to cricketer-turned-politician and Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader Yusuf Pathan by around 85,000 votes.
Congress yet to release a list for Bengal polls
The Congress is yet to release its first list of candidates for the West Bengal elections. The party had contested the 2021 polls along with the Left alliance. It had contested on 91 seats but had failed to win even a single seat in the 294-member legislative assembly, but had secured a vote share of around 2.93 per cent.
Congress' performance in 2016 West Bengal polls was also dismal, where it had won 44 seats with a 12.25 per cent vote share.
Coming to the 2026 West Bengal polls, the polling will be held in two phases: April 23 and April 29. The counting of votes will take place on May 4, along with those in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Assam and the union territory (UT) of Puducherry.
