In Howrah bye-election just one Muslim in fray out of 13.
By Zaidul Haque, TwoCircles.net,
Kolkata: In the Howrah bye-elections for being held today there is just one Muslim candidate in the fray out of total 13 candidates trying their luck. Trinamul Congress and CPIM and Congress are the main rivals. Although a BJP candidate had filed nomination, he later withdrew.
The lone Muslim candidate Jamal Ahmed is contesting as an independent.
Jamal Ahmed
Howrah parliamentary constituency covers seven Assembly constituencies Bally, Howrah Uttar, Howrah Madhya, Shibpur, Howrah Dakshin, Sankrail (SC) and Panchla.
In 209 General election Ambica Banerjee of Trinamul Congress had won the seat by 37392 votes against the CPIM candidate Swadesh Chakraborty. BJP had bagged 37723 votes. The seat was vacated recently after his death in April.
According to the state Election commissioner, there are 1851 booths in Howrah Constituency and 8884 government poll workers have been engaged.
More than 30 % of Howrah voters are Muslims, however, of the seven MLAs from the district only one representative is from the minority community; Gulshan Mullick of Trinamul Congress had won the seat at Panchla in Assembly election 2011.
The bye election in Howarh is a prestigious fight for Congress, CPIM and Trinamul Congress. This is the first bye-election for a Lok Sabha constituency after the alliance between the Congress and TMC collapsed.
Arjun Prize winner Footballer Prasun Mukherjee is contesting on the TMC ticket, Sridip Bhattacharya of CPIM and Sanatan Mukherjee is fighting on the Congress tickets.
In last parliamentary elections 15 candidates had contested.
Amongst Muslim candidates, Abul Momin Sheikh had bagged only 1176 votes, 0.12 percent of total polled.
There is little hope of Jamal Ahmed of winning many votes.