Adhir Chowdhury - A Local Phenomenon On A National Stage

Adhir Chowdhury, the Congress leader in this Lok Sabha, has led a controversial life. he decimated the Left in his constituency Baharampur in Bengal and soon became a strongman of the region. Charged with a number of cases, it remains to be seen how Chowdhury fares at the national level

- Diptendra Raychaudhuri

Adhir Chowdhury is the name of a phenomenon. Two mighty Chief Ministers, Buddhadev Bhattacharya of the left Front and Mamata Banerjee of Trinamool Congress (popularly TMC), pulled out all the stops to crush this political ‘upstart’.. But, defying a chakravyuh of the left parties, the 40-year old Adhir got elected to the assembly from Nabagram constituency in 1996. Three years later, in 1999, he took up a huge challenge by contesting from Baharampur lok Sabha constituency, then considered unwinnable by the Congress, and since remains unbeaten for five consecutive terms.

But the phenomenon called Adhir was not limited to individual success. By 2004, he almost decimated the left from the district, and helped Pranab Mukherjee to win his first Lok Sabha election from the adjacent Jangipur constituency. For the first time since independence, all the three seats of the district were bagged by the Congress that year. For the next ten years, it was Adhir-raj in the Muslim-dominated district. Since then, Mamata Banerjee, as a Chief Minister, played havoc with Congress organisation in the district. her relentless fusillades have succeeded to bring Jangipur and Murshidabad seats to TMC in 2019, but Chowdhury remains unbeaten in Baharampur, that too at a time when Bengal returned only two Congress MPs.