Battle for Bengal: What BJP's candidate lists show so far

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Tuesday released its fourth list of 13 candidates for the West Bengal Assembly elections, fielding new entrant Santosh Pathak from Chowringhee and Soma Thakur from the Matua-dominated Bagda constituency.

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With this, the party has announced candidates for 288 of the 294 seats, leaving only six constituencies undeclared.

The choice of Soma Thakur, wife of Bongaon MP and Union minister Shantanu Thakur, from Bagda in North 24 Parganas, reflects the BJP’s focus on consolidating the Matua vote, a refugee community that holds influence across several seats in southern Bengal.

In Kolkata's Chowringhee, the party has fielded Santosh Pathak, a five-time Congress councillor who joined the BJP earlier this month after leaving the Congress. His candidature comes days after he joined the party in the presence of state president Samik Bhattacharya.

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Among other candidates named are Ashutosh Barma (Sitai), Girija Shankar Roy (Natabari), Uttam Kumar Banik (Magrahat Purba), Debangshu Panda (Falta), Debashish Dhar (Sonarpur Uttar), Shyamal Hati (Howrah Dakshin), Ranjan Kumar Paul (Panchla), Piyushkanti Das (Chandipur), Pradip Lodha (Garbeta), Manab Guha (Memari) and Arijit Roy (Bansdroni).

Debashish Dhar, a former IPS officer, has been fielded from Sonarpur Uttar after an earlier Lok Sabha bid was derailed when his nomination papers were rejected for failing to furnish a "no dues" certificate.

The BJP also revised its candidate for Maynaguri, replacing Kaushik Roy, who had been named earlier, with Dalim Roy.

BJP's first list, released on March 16, contained 144 names and produced the party's biggest early political signal: Suvendu Adhikari was fielded from both Nandigram and Bhabanipur. Nandigram is the constituency from where Adhikari defeated Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in 2021 by 1,956 votes.

Bhabanipur, by contrast, is Banerjee's own seat in Kolkata, the constituency through which she returned to the Assembly after losing in Nandigram. By fielding Adhikari from both seats, the BJP turned the election into a direct and symbolic duel between its principal Bengal face and the Trinamool Congress supremo.

The second list, announced on March 19, added 112 more candidates and showed the party broadening its social and political pitch. It brought in a mix of celebrity faces, protest-linked figures and institutional names.

Among the more prominent candidates were Sandeshkhali protest face Rekha Patra from Hingalganj, actor Roopa Ganguly from Sonarpur Dakshin and former Kolkata police commissioner Rajesh Kumar from Jagatdal.

In the third list, released on March 25, the party named the mother of the RG Kar hospital doctor who was raped and murdered last year as its candidate from Panihati.

That nomination signalled the BJP's attempt to keep women's safety and the public anger over the RG Kar case at the centre of the election conversation. 

Polling for the West Bengal Assembly elections will be held in two phases on April 23 and April 29, while votes will be counted on May 4. The Trinamool Congress has already announced candidates for all 294 seats, leaving the BJP with only six names still to declare.