Srijan Bhattacharya: CPM’s young Singur face hopes to revive party’s fortunes

Known to be calm and affable, Srijan Bhattacharya’s campaign has gained a fair bit of traction in Singur.

Student leader Srijan Bhattacharya.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) has fielded student leader Srijan Bhattacharya from Singur constituency in the West Bengal elections, and the 28-year-old will be taking on two heavyweights – the Trinamool Congress’s Becharam Manna and the BJP’s Rabindra Nath Bhattacharya.

The Singur and Nandigram agitations in 2007-2008 had cost the CPM heavily, and eventually led to the dethroning of the Left regime after 34 years in West Bengal. The party has been progressively on the decline in the state since then and hopes to revive its fortunes this time by fielding younger faces such as Bhattacharya.

A resident of Haltu in South Kolkata, where the CPM’s organisation continues to be strong, Bhattacharya holds a Master’s in History from Jadavpur University and has been quite active in SFI politics.

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Known to be calm and affable, Srijan’s campaign has gained a fair bit of traction in Singur.

With the constituency set to vote on April 10, Bhattacharya is busy with last-minute campaigning in the area. He has been covering 10-km daily, even telling some BJP supporters that he can “convince them to vote for the CPI(M)”.

In the elections this year, the CPM has fielded many fresh faces, including candidates such as Meenakshi Mukherjee (Nandigram), Aishe Ghosh (Jamuria) and Dipsita Dhar (Bally), apart from Bhattacharya in Singur, with an aim to attract new youth voters and set up new line of young leadership in the party. “Once upon a time, Gautam Deb, Saifuddin Choudhury and many others became leaders of the party at a very young age and in a very short period of time. Since then, we have not had a young leadership and it has affected our organisation. After a long time, we have a very good line-up of young leaders, and Srijan is prominent among them.”

Atri Mitra

Atri Mitra is a Special Correspondent of The Indian Express with more than 20 years of experience in reporting from West Bengal, Bihar and the North-East. He has been covering administration and political news for more than ten years and has a keen interest in political development in West Bengal. Atri holds a Master degree in Economics from Rabindrabharati University and Bachelor's degree from Calcutta University. He is also an alumnus of St. Xavier's, Kolkata and Ramakrishna Mission Asrama, Narendrapur. He started his career with leading vernacular daily the Anandabazar Patrika, and worked there for more than fifteen years. He worked as Bihar correspondent for more than three years for Anandabazar Patrika. He covered the 2009 Lok Sabha election and 2010 assembly elections. He also worked with News18-Bangla and covered the Bihar Lok Sabha election in 2019. ... Read More

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