In one day, Mamata loses party symbol, Nandigram candidate after Suvendu meet

Mamata camp's Sanchita Pradhan De withdrew her Nandigram bypoll candidature hours after meeting Chief Minister and sitting MLA Suvendu Adhikari. Her decision came on the day the Election Commission allotted new symbols and names to the rival camps led by Mamata Banerjee and Ritabrata Banerjee.

In Short

• Mamata says her camp will not field candidate in Nandigram
• She says she will back Congress candidate in upcoming bypolls
• Suvendu Adhikari says BJP will break all records in Nandigram

The Trinamool Congress (TMC) candidate from the Mamata Banerjee camp, Sanchita Pradhan De, withdrew her candidature from the upcoming crucial Nandigram poll, with barely a month to go, hours after she met the Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari at the state secretariat in Nabanna.

While sources had earlier described it as a courtesy meeting, given that Suvendu Adhikari is both the sitting MLA of Nandigram and the Chief Minister, political circles had already begun attaching significance to the meeting.

Incidentally, De’s decision to meet Suvendu, reportedly in secrecy, came moments after the Election Commission assigned Mamata’s camp the symbol of a 'football player' and her rival camp, led by Ritabrata Banerjee, the ‘envelope’ as its party symbol for the upcoming bypolls in Rejinagar and Nandigram.

Mamata Banerjee lashed out at the BJP, calling it a "jumla party" soon after De’s withdrawal of candidature and announced that her camp would back the Congress candidate instead, saying that she was with the INDIA bloc.

“We are ready to fight it out. I want the BJP to go from India. Our full solidarity with the INDIA bloc,” she said at a press conference, adding that her party would not field any candidate from there.

However, on a day when the political needle has swung rapidly, barely an hour after Mamata pledged her support to Congress candidate Milan Pradhan, he was arrested in an old case in connection with three murder cases, one of which dates back to 2007, according to Congress General Secretary KC Venugopal.

"Using a dormant 19-year-old case from 2007 to arrest our candidate -- minutes after Mamata Banerjee ji extended support -- is a sign that BJP will go to any lengths to hijack democracy," he said.

28 years ago, Mamata had walked out of the Congress in 1998 to form the party whose name and symbol she has now lost, at least temporarily, after the Election Commission froze the TMC’s name and “Flowers and Grass” (Jora Phool) symbol pending a final decision on which faction is the real Trinamool Congress.

Now, she is knocking on the doors of the party she left nearly three decades ago. Until recently, when Mamata was the Chief Minister of Bengal, she had dismissed any talk of an alliance with the Congress in the state. However, after the TMC’s drubbing, she has cosied up to the Congress, fuelling speculation about a possible merger, which the Grand Old Party rejected. Until recently, the Congress had reportedly also rejected the TMC’s offer of an alliance.

Calling it a “black day for democracy,” Mamata further wondered how the “EC could freeze my party’s symbol that has been with us for 28 years” after the poll panel froze the “Flowers and Grass” (Jora Phool) symbol.

Nandigram has held great political significance in Bengal politics for decades. The peasants’ revolt there eventually brought down the powerful Left government and paved the way for Mamata Banerjee’s rise to power.

In 2021, Mamata challenged Suvendu Adhikari, who had been her key aide during the Nandigram uprising. She was defeated by a wafer-thin margin but retained power in the state.

This year, Mamata did not contest from Nandigram. Suvendu, however, challenged her in her home constituency of Bhabanipur and also contested from Nandigram to retain the seat.

The Nandigram bypoll was necessitated after Suvendu defeated Mamata Banerjee in Bhabanipur, her home turf. He had also announced that he would retain the constituency, thus giving up Nandigram, as under electoral rules, a candidate can contest up to two seats but can retain only one if they win both.

The BJP has fielded Hasirani Rath, the mother of Suvendu Adhikari’s personal assistant Chandranath Rath, who was murdered following the Bengal Assembly election results earlier this year, from Nandigram.

Suvendu had earlier said that the BJP would break all records for its victory margin in his home constituency in the upcoming bypoll.

With the TMC’s original name and symbol frozen, its Nandigram candidate withdrawing and Mamata Banerjee now backing the Congress candidate, the bypoll has taken an unexpected turn. For Suvendu Adhikari and the BJP, the contest now offers another opportunity to test their hold over Nandigram -- a seat that has remained central to Bengal’s political story.

- Ends