Land isn’t the only imponderable this election in Bengal; so is delimitation which has changed the voter demography in some former Left or Opposition bastions.

Take, for example, the new Calcutta North constituency, formed by merging the Calcutta North West and Calcutta North East seats. Neither Sudip Bandopadhyay of the Trinamul Congress nor his rival, Mohammad Salim of the CPM, is quite sure how the merger would affect his prospects.

Bandopadhyay would have been better placed in the old Calcutta North West, a Congress stronghold. Calcutta North East, which Salim had won in 2004, had a more mixed character, sometimes favouring the Congress and sometimes the Left. North East had a sizeable Muslim population too that may prefer the CPM.

“Three of Calcutta North’s seven Assembly segments are represented by the CPM in the Assembly — Entally, Beliaghata and Manicktala,” Bandopadhyay said.

A fourth, the newly created Cossipore-Belgachhia, too has sizeable CPM voters. “There is no room for complacency on our part,” the Trinamul candidate said.

Many Left and Opposition candidates are nervously trying to anticipate the possible changes in voting pattern in their constituencies. They have only the results of the 2006 Assembly polls and the 2008 panchayat elections to go by though they realise that voter mood may have changed since then.

The CPM’s Sujan Chakraborty, for instance, may not have it easy in Jadavpur this time since Bhangar and Tollygunge, two Trinamul Assembly strongholds, have been included in place of CPM-controlled Behala West and Magrahat West.

Of the five other segments, the Jadavpur Assembly seat, represented by chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, remains intact. The remaining four — Sonarpur South, Sonarpur North, Baruipur East and Baruipur West — have been carved out of the erstwhile Sonarpur and Baruipur seats.

In the 2006 Assembly polls, the CPM candidates had won Sonarpur and Baruipur narrowly, by 4,000 and 8,000 votes. In the 2008 panchayat polls, however, when Trinamul wrested the South 24-Parganas zilla parishad, the CPM retained only three of the nine zilla parishad seats that fall in the mainly rural Jadavpur Lok Sabha seat. It lost the remaining six to Trinamul.

Trinamul candidate Kabir Suman said: “I am optimistic about winning from Jadavpur following the changes brought about by delimitation.”

His party chief Mamata Banerjee, contesting the adjoining Calcutta South, is a trifle worried. Behala East, now represented by the CPM, has been included into her constituency. This apart, Kasba is also causing her worries — it has been carved out of Dhakuria, controlled by Left Front constituent RSP.

“The changes in Calcutta South because of delimitation would stand me in good stead,” said the CPM’s Rabin Deb, who is pitted against Mamata. “I am confident of support from the voters of Behala East and Kasba.”

But Mamata can hope that Calcutta Port, carved out of the old Kabitirtha which is now represented by the Congress, would compensate the losses.

“The Muslims of the Port area will vote for Mamata since she has severed her ties with the BJP,” Trinamul president Subrata Bakshi said.

If delimitation has pepped up Congress candidate Subrata Mukherjee in Bankura, it has added creases to the brow of party colleague Deepa Das Munshi, wife of the ailing Priya Ranjan Das Munshi, in Raiganj.

Her rival Bireswar Lahiri said: “Assembly segments with Congress-majority votes have been merged with other constituencies and those with CPM-dominated vote patterns have been brought into Raiganj. This may augur well for us.”

Three Assembly segments — Kharba, Ratua and Harishchandrapur — where the Congress had won in the 2006 state elections have been transferred to the newly formed North Malda seat. In their place, two Left-dominated segments — Kaliaganj under Balurghat and Islampur under Darjeeling — have been brought in along with two new Assembly seats — Hemtabad and Chakulia.

“The delimitation has somewhat queered Deepa’s pitch. She is depending more on a sympathy wave arising out of Priyada’s illness,” a senior Congress leader from North Dinajpur said.

Subrata, pitted against the CPM’s Basudeb Acharya, said he had decided to contest Bankura “despite knowing it is a tough seat” because of the changes following delimitation.

“In four Assembly seats in Bankura, the Opposition suffered defeats by over one lakh votes in almost every election after the Left Front came to power. All the four — Para, Hura, Onda and Kashipur — have now been taken out of Bankura and replaced by Saltora, Ranibadh, Raipur and Taldanga, where we have a considerable presence. The new segments will help me put up a tough fight against the CPM nominee,” Subrata said.

Trinamul’s Gobinda Naskar appears to have the edge in Bongaon (SC), the only new Lok Sabha constituency created after delimitation. His party controls four of the seven Assembly segments.

Delimitation has also boosted the chances of Trinamul’s Subhendu Adhikari, who is taking on the CPM’s Lakshman Seth in Tamluk.

Of the seven Assembly segments, two — Nandakumar and Haldia (SC) — are new ones carved out of the former Sutahata and Norghat, both represented by the Left.

“Although we trailed by over 30,000 votes in Sutahata and a little less than 10,000 in Norghat, the inclusion of Nandakumar and Haldia will help us going by the results of last year’s panchayat polls. Trinamul won all 11 panchayat samitis and 10 zilla parishad seats spread over Haldia, Nandakumar and some other segments in Tamluk,” a Trinamul general secretary from East Midnapore said.

Still, delimitation will certainly not be the decisive factor in Tamluk; Nandigram will be.