Mayor Gautam Deb made it clear on Friday that he would no longer contest from the Dabgram-Fulbari Assembly constituency, from where he had won twice, and said he would return to “his native place, Siliguri”.

Deb, considered a prominent Trinamool Congress leader in north Bengal, was speaking at a programme where he laid the foundation stone for a road project at Paschim Dhantala in Fulbari 2 panchayat, on the outskirts of Siliguri. The road is being built by the Trinamool-run Jalpaiguri zilla parishad.

“I have received both love and rejection from the residents of the Dabgram-Fulbari Assembly seat. I accepted it humbly and now, I have decided to return to my native place, Siliguri,” Deb said.

Deb had won from Dabgram-Fulbari in 2011 and 2016. In the first term of the Mamata Banerjee government, Deb was north Bengal development minister. He was the tourism minister in the second term.

In the 2021 Assembly elections, BJP candidate Sikha Chatterjee defeated him by a margin of over 27,000 votes in the same segment.

After Trinamool secured a majority in the Siliguri Municipal Corporation (SMC) polls in 2022, Deb became the mayor.

The Siliguri Assembly constituency comprises 33 wards of the SMC. The remaining 14 wards, along with four contiguous panchayats of the Rajganj block of Jalpaiguri, are in the Dabgram-Fulbari constituency.

Trinamool won all these 14 wards in the 2022 municipal polls. Deb secured a win in ward 33 (one of these 14 wards).

In the 2023 panchayat elections, Trinamool bagged all three of the four panchayats (Fulbari 1 and 2, and Dabgram 1), which are in the Dabgram-Fulbari Assembly
constituency.

Deb said on Friday that although he implemented several development and infrastructure projects — including roads and the establishment of Uttarkanya, the state’s branch secretariat at Fulbari — he felt overlooked by the electorate.

He highlighted that the branch secretariat set up at Fulbari was the first of its kind in the state and claimed that numerous development projects were executed when he was the MLA.

“I am now the mayor of the SMC, which is an equally important position. I consider my defeat a loss for the people of Dabgram-Fulbari. The current MLA and the BJP MP of Jalpaiguri have not done anything substantial for the development of the constituency so far,” he said.

BJP MLA Sikha Chatterjee said the mayor had realised that the people had rejected him.

“He knows that if he contests again from Dabgram-Fulbari, he faces defeat. To avoid further humiliation, he has decided to return to Siliguri. I would, in due course, disclose the development projects executed during my tenure,” she said.

With this announcement, political circles in and around Siliguri are abuzz as to whether Deb would contest from Siliguri, a seat which Trinamool has won only once since 2011.

Shankar Ghosh of the BJP won from Siliguri in 2021 and is slated to contest from the same seat this year also.