The constituency incorporates both industrial zones like Falta SEZ and Budge Budge industrial belt as well as vast tracts of agricultural land. However, at the grassroots level, the farmland-for-industry issue still haunts the voters. Almost 35 per cent of the voters of the constituency are Muslims, who turned the tide against the Left in the last panchayat elections out of fear that their land might taken be over by the government. The Trinamool had made a clean sweep of the rural bodies. Falta, Budge Budge (I), Budge Budge (II), Diamond Harbour and Bishnupur (II) — all of which were once considered Left bastions — did a turnaround in the panchayat elections.

“Since the 2004 LS elections a lot of things have happened. We are not fools. In 2004, we voted for the CPI(M). But in the panchayat elections, I did not even go to the polling booth. The CPI(M)is looking after common people any longer,” says Md Ishaq, a resident of Falta.

“The state government acquired land for Falta, but may people are yet to receive compensation. What the Left did in Nandigram is well-known. If they return, they will again try and take land,” says Md Jalal, a resident of Amtala.

Another major issue is the closed industries in this belt. “So many industries here have been shut down for years and nobody has benefited from them. Birla Synthetics, Birla Gas and Carbide and three units of Birla jute have all been lying closed for years,” says Robin Jana, a tea stall owner in Diamond Harbour, who was attached to one of the factories that closed eight years ago.

... contd.