The prestigious Kolkata North and Kolkata South Lok Sabha seats are all set to witness clashes among seasoned politicians in the coming general elections.
The Kolkata North constituency, which has 13,66,647 voters as per the 2009 Lok Sabha election records, is all set to witness a tough four-cornered fight among the Congress, the Left Front, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the BJP.
Sitting TMC MP and former Union Minister of State for Health Sudip Bandopadhyay will take on Left Front's Rupa Bagchi, the opposition leader in Kolkata Municipal Corporation as well as BJP state president Rahul Sinha.
Congress leader Somen Mitra, who recently switched sides from the Trinamool, is likely to get the Congress ticket from this parliamentary segment.
During the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, when the Congress and the TMC fought as allies, Bandopadhyay had polled 4,60,646 votes as a Congress-Trinamool alliance candidate, while then LF candidate Mohammed Salim had polled 3,51,368 votes.
The Kolkata South constituency, which has 15,05,638 voters as per the 2009 Lok Sabha election records and known as West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool supremo Mamata Banerjee's constituency since 1991, will witness a contest between sitting Trianmool MP Subrata Bakshi, pitted against Left Front candidate Nandini Mukherjee and BJP's Tathagata Roy.
Bakshi had won the seat after Banerjee resigned to contest from the Bhawanipore Assembly segment after the Trinamool came to power in West Bengal in 2011.
Mukherjee had then fought as a Left Front candidate against Banerjee and had secured just 20 per cent of the total votes polled.
Banerjee, during the 2009 Lok Sabha elections had polled 5,76,045 votes, defeating her nearest rival Rabin Deb, who had polled 3,56,474 votes.
