West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday announced that she will contest the upcoming Assembly elections from Nandigram, NDTV reported.
“I will contest from Nandigram,” Banerjee said while addressing a public meeting in the town. “Nandigram is my lucky place.” She will also contest the polls from Bhawanipur in Kolkata, her traditional seat.
Former Trinamool Congress leader Suvendu Adhikari, who switched over to the Bharatiya Janata Party in December, had won the Nandigram seat in the 2016 Assembly elections. The announcement is also significant as Nandigram symbolises the party’s struggle against forcible land acquisition by the then Left Front regime for creation of a special economic zone. The Nandigram movement, a campaign for farmers’ land, had catapulted Banerjee to power in the 2011 state elections. It marked the end of the decades-long Left rule in the state.
In an apparent dig at Adhikari, the Bengal chief minister said that she was not worried about those changing sides. “When TMC was formed, none of them were there,” she was quoted as saying by PTI. She claimed those who have left the Trinamool Congress did so to protect the money “they have looted” in the last few years.
The chief minister attacked the BJP, accusing it of luring her party men by promising to turn their black money into white. “Washing Powder Bhajapa [BJP]: TMC mein kaala, BJP ka washing machine me shaada [black in Trinamool, white in BJP washing machine],” she said.
The saffron party, however, termed Banerjee’s decision to take on Adhikari in his fiefdom as a sign of nervousness. “Mamata Banerjee’s decision to shift seat from Bhawanipore to Nandigram, for the first time in 10 years, indicates her political nervousness,” Amit Malviya, the BJP’s social media head and in charge of West Bengal, said in a tweet. “Will she explain why IPS Satyajit Bandopadhyay, chargesheeted by CBI for firing on protesting farmers in Nandigram, was inducted in TMC?”
The elections are expected to be held in April-May. The West Bengal elections will be a closely-watched contest as the Bharatiya Janata Party has indicated that the polls in the state are one of its priorities.
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