Uluberia’s missing 2019 puzzle: what we know, what’s unclear, and where to look next

The clear chapters: 2018 and 2024 results, same winner

One detail keeps slipping through the cracks: the full, verified 2019 result for the Uluberia Lok Sabha seat. The surrounding years are well documented. The 2018 bye-election, held after the seat fell vacant, delivered a decisive win to the Trinamool Congress (TMC): Sajda Ahmed won with 767,556 votes, defeating the BJP’s Anupam Mallik. Then came 2024, and the pattern held—Sajda Ahmed retained Uluberia with 724,622 votes. The BJP’s Arunuday Paulchowdhury finished second with 505,949. That’s a margin of 218,673 votes, a comfortable cushion by any measure.

Uluberia sits in West Bengal’s Howrah district, west of Kolkata, and mixes busy town clusters with peri-urban and rural pockets. It’s the kind of constituency where local networks, voter services, and a recognizable candidate matter. Sajda Ahmed has been that constant presence for the TMC since the 2018 bypoll, and the 2024 tally suggests the party’s organization still runs deep on the ground.

What’s driving that endurance? In conversations across West Bengal, two themes repeat: welfare delivery and booth-level muscle. The TMC’s pitch—women-focused cash support, health cards, and steady work on rural roads and drainage—tends to show up in local narratives. The BJP, meanwhile, has built a strong statewide base over the past decade, improving vote shares and cadre presence. In Uluberia, though, the 2024 numbers say the TMC still had the edge when ballots were counted.

So we have a clear 2018. We have a clear 2024. But the 2019 story? That’s the blank space.

The missing 2019 picture—and how to verify it

Here’s the rub: the specific, line-by-line 2019 result for Uluberia is not readily visible in the current set of search results reviewed. You’ll find references that Sajda Ahmed contested and that the BJP fielded a well-known name in West Bengal politics. Some summaries even claim the BJP nominee was Joy Banerjee. But those mentions often lack the underlying forms or full constituency count. Without the actual return—candidate list, vote totals, and certifications—it stays unverified.

Why is this gap so common? Two reasons crop up again and again with Indian election data. First, link rot: official PDFs and dashboards get moved when portals are refreshed, especially across cycles. Second, indexing hiccups: constituency codes, spellings, or year filters can keep a legit file from surfacing in a basic search. If you’ve ever chased a Form 20 at midnight, you know the feeling.

If you want to lock down the 2019 Uluberia result with confidence, here’s a clean, practical checklist:

• Go to the official national results portal for the 2019 general election and find the constituency page for Uluberia (West Bengal). You’re looking for the final result sheet that lists every candidate, votes polled, and the winner.
• Open the Form 20 (final result and counting sheet) for Uluberia, if available. That’s the gold standard: it shows round-wise counts, postal ballots, and the certified totals.
• Check the state Chief Electoral Officer’s archive for 2019. State portals often host duplicates of PDFs that disappear from the national site after redesigns.
• Confirm the candidate roster: you should see Sajda Ahmed (TMC) and the BJP nominee for 2019. If the BJP name shows as Joy Banerjee, treat it as verified only if it appears on the official result sheet or candidate affidavit list for that year.
• Cross-check with reputable election datasets that mirror official numbers. When two independent repositories match the Form 20 totals, you can treat the figures as stable.

Once you find the document trail, a few data points deserve attention.

• Vote share shift: Compare Sajda Ahmed’s 2019 vote share to 2018 and 2024. Did the share dip in 2019 during the BJP’s statewide surge and then recover in 2024, or did it stay flat?
• Margin trend: Put the 2019 margin next to 2018’s bypoll win and 2024’s 218,673-vote lead. That will tell you whether 2024 was consolidation or a bounce-back.
• Assembly segment splits: If the result files include segment-wise leads, look at which pockets swung hardest in 2019. Segments that softened in 2019 but came back in 2024 can explain ground-level campaigning shifts.
• Postal ballots: In tight contests, postal votes can matter. Even in a clear race, a look at postal tallies shows how employees on duty voted compared to the general stream.

Why does this one constituency’s 2019 page matter? Because it captures a statewide story in miniature. West Bengal saw a fierce TMC–BJP contest in 2019. In several seats, the BJP scaled up sharply. If Uluberia bucked that spike, you’d expect the 2019 margin to remain wide for the TMC. If it narrowed there, then 2024’s big margin looks like a rebound fueled by organization, candidate familiarity, and welfare delivery landing with core voters.

There’s also the continuity angle. Voters often weigh local access: who picks up the phone, who shows up at a health camp, who gets a culvert fixed. Sajda Ahmed’s three-cycle presence—2018 bypoll, 2019 general, 2024 general—means there’s a consistent face at the top of the ticket. In places with mixed urban and rural needs, that steadiness often counts for more than party branding alone.

Another piece to watch when the 2019 file turns up: turnout. Bypolls and generals behave differently. Bypolls can be flatter or weirdly spiky, depending on the moment. General elections tend to normalize turnout across segments. If 2019 turnout rose sharply from 2018 and then eased a bit in 2024, it would explain why raw vote totals move even when broad loyalties do not.

None of this replaces the need for the actual 2019 sheet. Numbers settle arguments. Until then, the verified picture is this: Sajda Ahmed carried Uluberia in the 2018 bye-election, and she carried it again in 2024 with 724,622 votes against the BJP’s Arunuday Paulchowdhury, who polled 505,949. The open question is the 2019 spread—who finished second, by how much, and how that compares with the two bookend results we already have. Once that document lands on the table, the three-election arc will finally make sense.