Trinamool retains Singur, Nandigram

The Trinamool Congress, which swept back to power in West Bengal with a massive mandate on Thursday, retained Singur and Nandigram - the twin hotbeds of anti-acquisition movement that powered the Mamata Banerjee party to oust the Left Front five years back.

In Singur constituency in Hooghly district, Trinamool's Rabindranath Bhattacharya defeated Congress-backed Communist Party of India-Marxist nominee Rabin Deb by a margin of over 20,000 votes.

Bhattacharya polled an impressive 96,212 votes against Deb's 75,885.

Singur was on the boil between 2006 and 2008 after the then Left Front government acquired 997.11 acres of land for setting up Tata's small car factory.

Demanding return of 400 acres to "unwilling farmers" (from whom land was allegedly taken against their will), the then opposition Trinamool led by Banerjee spearheaded a violent and sustained peasants movement that ultimately forced the automobile giants to shift its plant to Sanand in Gujarat.

The movement raised Trinamool's popularity graph, and it went from strength to strength to oust the 34-year-old Left Front government in the 2011 assembly polls.

In Nandigram, Trinamool's Suvendu Adhikari won by a whopping margin of 81,230 votes against Communist Party of India's Abdul Kabir Sekh.

Located in East Midnapore, Nandigram, witnessed the spectre of a police firing that had left 14 dead nine years back. The firing which received national and international attention had also played a vital role in ending Left Front rule.

--IANS

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