BJP's Saumitra Khan and Trinamool's Sujata Mondal.
Credit: Instagram/ @saumitramp and X/@@SUJATAAITC
Saumitra Khan, BJP
“If the Trinamool Congress workers create any trouble, I will gouge their eyes out,” Saumitra Khan, the BJP’s candidate in Bishnupur Lok Sabha constituency in West Bengal, says. The 43-year-old has been representing Bishnupur in the Lok Sabha since 2014, first as a Trinamool Congress MP, and then as one of the BJP’s since 2019. His political career had started with the Congress, which had got him elected to the legislative assembly of West Bengal in 2012. He had however switched to the TMC a year later. He was in February 2019 barred by the High Court from entering Bankura – the district having all but one assembly segment of his parliamentary constituency – for his alleged involvement in a case of extortion, his wife Sujata Mondal campaigned for him and ensured his victory with a margin of over 78,000 votes. He now has Sujata as his rival as the TMC fielded his former wife as its candidate in Bishnupur. He made some offensive comments about Sujata in the early days of campaigning and even once called her ‘greedy’ but later exercised restraint.
Sujata Mondal, TMC
“She is a bit ‘Gablu-Goblu’ (chubby). Her ex-husband was too smart and that’s why left her,” Mamata Banerjee says, affectionately introducing Sujata Mondal, her Trinamool Congress’s candidate in Bishnupur, in an election rally and urging people to vote for her.
"I don’t want to take the name of that boy, but I wonder how she chose to marry him,” the chief minister of West Bengal adds, obviously referring to Sujata’s ex-husband and now electoral rival Saumitra Khan, whom the BJP fielded to retain the seat. Sujata, now 34, ensured his victory in 2019, but he sought divorce when she decided to join the TMC before the 2021 assembly elections. “I faced similar torture when I was living with him,” Sujata, a primary school teacher, says reacting to Saumitra’s intimidating words for the TMC workers. With the TMC supremo on her side on the podium, she gives a list of properties, allegedly illegal, of her ex-husband. “The BJP candidate has a very low standard,” says Sujata, reacting to Saumitra’s recent comment about police being a ‘pet dog’ of the ruling TMC in West Bengal.