In the 2026 West Bengal Assembly election for Magrahat Purba (141), Sarmistha Purkait of the All India Trinamool Congress secured victory with 1,08,412 votes, defeating Bharatiya Janata Party candidate Uttam Kumar Banik, who polled 76,805 votes. TMC won by a margin of 31,607 votes in the constituency. CPI(M)’s Chandan Saha finished third with 29,188 votes, while Congress and other smaller parties remained far behind. NOTA recorded 858 votes.Magrahat Purba (constituency no. 141) is a Scheduled Caste-reserved seat in South 24 Parganas district, under the Mathurapur Lok Sabha constituency. The constituency is rural in character, located in the Magrahat block region of the district. The area is part of the vast deltaic plain of South 24 Parganas, with paddy cultivation being the primary agricultural activity. CPI(M) had a long presence in this constituency before the TMC’s rise.In 2021, TMC’s Namita Saha won the seat by an emphatic margin of over 54,000 votes, defeating BJP’s Chandan Kumar Naskar. In 2016, Namita Saha also won the seat for the TMC. The constituency has been held by the TMC since 2011. The 2026 contest sees the TMC replace the incumbent with Sharmistha Purkait, a new candidate, while fielding against BJP’s Uttam Kumar Banik and Congress’s Dr Atanu Halder. The TMC’s dominant margins in both 2016 and 2021 suggest the party has a firm grip here. Given its SC-reserved status, welfare schemes and Dalit community concerns are central campaign themes. Congress’s Dr Atanu Halder may seek to consolidate educated and professional votes to make the party relevant in this constituency.
