Mamata vs Suvendu: West Bengal prepares for battle royale in Nandigram

Banerjee's stronghold is the 71,000 minority votes. So the task is to cut into the remaining that the BJP is hoping to get a fair share of

It’s battle royale in Nandigram —about 130 km from Kolkata — where West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee and her protégé-turned-adversary Suvendu Adhikari are locked in a face-off. And the race is just heating up.

Hoardings scream from everywhere in the constituency, “Bangla nijer meyekei chai (Bengal wants its own daughter)”, only to be interru­p­ted by Adhikari’s counter-narrat­ive, “Nandigram–Medinipur er bhoomiputra ke chai, bohiragata noi (Nandigram, Medinipur wants its son of the soil and not an outsider)”. Add to it the temple rounds from both sides, and it’s a heady mix of religion and politics for the