Kharagpur Sadar assembly election results 2026 | India News
Kharagpur Sadar of Paschim Medinipur District is currently represented in the West Bengal Legislative Assembly by Hiranmoy Chattopadhyay (popularly known as Hiran Chattopadhyay) of the Bharatiya Janata Party. In the 2021 election, he got 79,607 votes, defeating Trinamool Congress candidate Pradeep Sarkar, who got 75,836 votes; The margin of victory was 3,771 votes, making it a closely contested seat. Key issues include employment of educated youth around railways, engineering and service hubs, better connectivity between Kharagpur city and surrounding villages, and pressure on urban infrastructure – drainage, drinking water and housing – in fast-growing suburbs. There are nagging concerns about contract and outsourced jobs in the railways and allied sectors, a slowdown in local businesses, and demands for more government health and education facilities to match the presence of premier institutes like nearby IIT Kharagpur. Politically, the Kharagpur seat has a strong Congress legacy through long-time MLA Gyan Singh Sohanpal, but shifted to the BJP with Dilip Ghosh’s 2016 victory and consolidated that trend again in 2021 under Hiranmoy Chatterjee, making it one of the party’s key strongholds in South Bengal. The seat falls under Medinipur Lok Sabha constituency, now held by TMC’s June Mallya after the 2024 general elections, creating a BJP-MLA/TMC-MP split that shapes the current political rivalry on the ground.
