West Bengal elections: Another Banerjee vs Adhikari showdown likely

BJP fields Suvendu Adhikari from both Nandigram and Bhabanipur as part of strategy to challenge Mamata Banerjee in upcoming West Bengal Assembly polls

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday announced that party leader Suvendu Adhikari, who defeated West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in the Nandigram Assembly seat in the 2021 polls, will contest not only from his sitting seat but also Bhabanipur, which the Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader won in a bypoll that year.

 

Nandigram is located in Purba Medinipur district and Bhabanipur in south Kolkata. In the 2021 Assembly polls, the BJP emerged as the principal Opposition party in the state with 77 seats and 38 per cent vote share, second only to TMC’s 215 seats and 48 per cent vote share. Adhikari became the leader of the Opposition in the Assembly.

 

 

The BJP released its first list of 144 candidates for the polls for the 294-member West Bengal Assembly scheduled on April 23 and 29. The BJP also released its first list of 47 candidates for the elections to the 140-member Kerala Assembly, which are scheduled on April 9.

 

In Kerala, the BJP has fielded former Union ministers Rajeev Chandrasekhar and V Muraleedharan from Nemom and Kazhakoottam seats, respectively. The party has fielded Sobha Surendran, who lost to Congress’ K C Venugopal from the Alappuzha seat in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, from Palakkad. Navya Haridas, who had lost as the BJP’s candidate in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls from Wayanad against Congress’ Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, will contest from Kozhikode North.

 

For the West Bengal Assembly elections, the Left Front announced its first list of 192 candidates. Minakshi Mukherjee, who came third behind Adhikari and Banerjee in the Nandigram seat in the 2021 elections, will contest from Uttarpara in Hooghly district.

 

The Left Front has fielded CPI(M) candidate Sabina Yasmin from Kaliganj, mother of six-year-old Tamanna, who was killed in a crude bomb blast allegedly thrown from a victory rally on the day of counting for the by-elections in the seat in June last year, which was won by the TMC.

 

The BJP fielding Adhikari from both Nandigram and Bhabanipur is part of its intent to force Banerjee to concentrate her energy on the Bhabanipur seat and curtail her campaigning across the state. Nandigram was the epicentre of the 2007 anti-land acquisition movement that propelled Banerjee's rise to power, and her defeat from the seat in 2021 was an embarrassment for her and her party amid the TMC’s record victory.

 

In the 2021 polls, Adhikari defeated Banerjee by nearly 1,900 votes. In the Bhabanipur bypoll, Banerjee won by more than 58,000 votes. As part of the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls, Bhabanipur has seen some of the highest deletions in the state with over 47,000 names struck off the voters' list while more than 14,000 remain under adjudication.

 

The BJP has re-nominated 41 of its sitting legislators in West Bengal. Former state BJP president Dilip Ghosh will once again contest from Kharagpur Sadar, while former Rajya Sabha MP Swapan Dasgupta has been fielded from the Rashbehari Assembly seat in south Kolkata. Dasgupta lost by a little over 7,000 votes from the Tarakeswar seat in Hooghly district in 2021. Former India cricketer Ashok Dinda will again contest from Moyna, while Soumitra Chattopadhyay, from the family of Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, the author of national song ‘Vande Mataram’, will contest from Naihati.

 

On Sunday, the ruling Left Democratic Front released the list of 106 of its candidates for the Kerala Assembly polls within an hour of the EC announcing the poll schedule.

 

(With PTI inputs)