Former Union minister and Congress leader Deepa Dasmunsi will contest the West Bengal assembly elections against Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee from the Bhabanipur seat. Dasmunsi's name figures in the second list of 42 party candidates announced on Friday by the All India Congress Committee for the West Bengal elections, taking the total number of candidates declared by the party to 95, reported PTI. The Congress has indicated that it will not contest more than 100 seats in the 294-member House, leaving the rest to the Left parties with which it has struck an alliance, said the report. The Bharatiya Janata Party had announced on March 9 that Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose's grandnephew, Chandra Bose, will be contesting the elections against Banerjee.

Dasmunsi had lost the 2014 general election from Raiganj by a narrow margin of 1,600 votes to Mohammad Salim of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Banerjee's Trinamool Congress had fielded Dasmunsi's brother-in-law, Satya Ranjan Das Munshi, against her at the time. In the previous assembly election in 2011, the Congress had contested 61 seats in an alliance with the Trinamool Congress, which led to ouster of the CPI(M)-led Left Front after over 34 years in power. The Congress has renominated almost all its sitting MLAs for the upcoming six-phase polls, which will be held from April 4 to May 5.