The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has fielded well-known economist Ashok Lahiri as its candidate for the Balurghat assembly constituency in North Bengal's Dakshin Dinajpur district. The academic-technocrat-turned-politician, who hails from north Bengal and was a member of the 15th Finance Commission till recently, wants to reconnect with his roots by plunging into electoral politics and said he thought long and hard before taking the electoral plunge, as per a news agency report.

"I had left West Bengal in 1971 (when the Naxal movement was at its peak in the state) as the situation here was not conducive for studies, but I was always mentally present in Bengal... I always had the feeling that I needed to get back to my roots and do some work here," PTI quoted the BJP nominee as saying in an interview to the news agency.

Lahiri has had an illustrious and long career during which he served as chief economic advisor in the Ministry of Finance, as chairman of Bandhan Bank, executive director of ADB, besides working with the World Bank and IMF. Interestingly, he was appointed CEA by the Government of India in 2002 during the prime ministership of Atal Behari Vajpayee and continued even when Dr Manmohan Singh took the reins of the country.

Economist Ashok Lahiri

Many in the BJP see him as a potential finance minister of the state if the party rides to power, while others speculate that his Bengal stint is a precursor to higher positions at the Centre, the PTI report said.

BJP had earlier named Lahiri as a candidate from Alipurduar but had to replace him with a local veteran after his candidature led to widespread discontent among the saffron camp workers who accused the party high command of "parachuting a leader on to a safe seat".

On the Trinamool Congress slogan 'Khela Hobe' (Game will happen), the news agency quoted the Presidency College alumnus as saying, "I do not believe in playing games with people. I feel we need to work for the people here... These are dignified people who want to regain their place of honour."

It added, "I want to focus on three areas in the state - education, health and infrastructure. We need to raise the educational levels in the state, work in healthcare for schemes such as those seeking correct incidence of anemia among expectant mothers."

"It takes about 18 hours to travel from Kolkata to Siliguri, while the same distance takes about 10 hours in many other places in the country... there is a need to bridge the infrastructure gap," the report added him as saying.

Land acquisition issues have slowed the work of widening the vital National Highway-34 into a four-lane expressway, which connects the port city of Kolkata with Siliguri, the gateway to India's North East.

His close associates say, Lahiri, who is in his late 60s, has agreed to be fielded by the BJP as he felt he should be involved in working for Bengal's rejuvenation.

Lahiri's ex-colleague and fellow economist Dr Pronab Sen, former chief statistician of India, however, said, "I am surprised he took the plunge... I always thought he was a dyed-in-the-wool academic like me."

In a much-debated article titled 'West Bengal from an external perspective', Lahiri had a few years ago drawn a pen picture of the state's economy, pointing out that the once-prosperous, industrialised state is now lagging behind all-India average figures in both economic and social indicators.

He had ominously pointed out "the situation is gloomy in both social and physical infrastructure".

Balurghat vidhan sabha constituency

Balurghat vidhan sabha constituency is an assembly constituency in Dakshin Dinajpur district in West Bengal.

A Left bastion, the assembly segment has been largely held by MLAs representing the Revolutionary Socialist Party, including in the 2016 assembly polls when Biswanath Chowdhury defeated his nearest rival Shankar Chakraborty of Trinamool Congress.

Biswanath garnered over 60,000 votes against Sankar's over 59,000 votes in the 2016 polls, while BJP's Gautam Chakraborty was a distant third garnering mroe than 15,000 votes.

Earlier in the 2011 assembly polls, the seat was grabbed by TMC's Shankar who had defeated the sitting RSP MLA Biswanath. The latter had been winning the seat since 1977, seven times in a row until 2006.

Interestingly, the Balurghat Lok Sabha seat was snatched by BJP's Sukanta Majumdar in the 2019 polls. The seat was won by TMC's Arpita Ghosh in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls who had defeated the RSP canidate by a margin of over a lakh.

—With inputs from agencies

(Edited by : Ajay Vaishnav)

First Published:Mar 24, 2021 6:48 PM IST