UNI SPECIALJayanta Roy ChowdhuryKolkata, April 25 -- The sprawling mega-city's tony Rashbehari constituency, lined with ageing upper-class homes, is witnessing a battle royal between BJP's Swapan Dasgupta, an intellectual-turned-politician, and TMC's incumbent MLA Debasish Kumar.
The area on both sides of the wide Rashbehari Avenue slicing south Kolkata from Kalighat to Ballygunge has been home to some of Bengal's best and brightest, among whom are descendants of the state's intellectual elite, ranging from famous linguist Suniti Kumar Chatterji to well-known feminist writer Nabaneeta Dev Sen (Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen's first wife) to Dwarka Nath Gooptu, who is celebrated for inventing an anti-dote to malaria.
At first sight, Kumar, a T...