South Malda is one of West Bengal's 42 Lok Sabha constituencies and it is a high-stakes constituency. Polling for this seat is scheduled for May 7. Trinamool Congress (TMC) has announced Shahnawaz Ali Rehan as its candidate from South Malda. BJP has fielded Sreerupa Mitra Chaudhury, who is popularly known as Nirbhaya Didi from this seat and Congress has picked Isha Khan Choudhary.
TMC candidate Shahnawaz Ali Raihan is a 42-year-old academic and former journalist. He has been at the forefront of the CAA protests and the proposed NRC in front of the Indian High Commission in London in 2019-20.
Raihan is a historian pursuing his DPhil at Oxford University’s St Antony’s College since 2018 under the supervision of noted historian Faisal Devji.
On the other hand, BJP's choice Sreerupa Mitra Chaudhary is the sitting BJP MLA from the English Bazar Assembly segment in Malda. She is popularly known as Nirbhaya Didi. Not just this, she is a former journalist, social worker and women’s rights activist.
After the 2012 Delhi gang rape case, she chaired the special task force on rape, trafficking and violence against women set up by former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. This is how she got the 'Nirbhaya Didi' moniker.
The Congress candidate Isha Khan Choudhary is the son of sitting MP Abu Hasem Khan Choudhury who has won the seat since 2009. Known popularly as Dalu da, he is the brother of former Union Minister and Congress stalwart A B A Ghani Khan Choudhury.
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