Game on, it's Mamata versus Suvendu in Nandigram

Vibha Sharma

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, March 6

It is official now, the BJP has fielded former TMC leader and once close confidante of Mamata Banerjee, Suvendu Adhikari against the Chief Minister in high-stakes Nadigram Assembly constituency in poll-bound West Bengal.

The party made the announcement in its first list of 57 candidates ahead of the Prime Minister's visit to the state.

Mamata announced her candidature from Nandigram on Friday. 

"The BJP has announced Shri Suvendu Adhikari as its candidate from Nandigram. Mamata Banerjee will soon join the inglorious list of incumbent Chief Ministers to lose their own elections. Let the drums roll...," tweeted BJP IT cell in-charge Amit Malviya.

 

Earlier, Malviya had claimed that Abbas Siddiqui-led CPIM-Congress alliance left the Nandigram seat for "their shadow partner, the TMC, but it will not help" Mamata win Nandigram.

"But even then, Pishi won’t be able to win Nandigram because there is a strong undercurrent in favour of the BJP! Such adjustments make BJP the only alternative in WB," he said.

Malviya had on Friday said that Mamata "deserted" Bhowanipore, her traditional seat, in favour of Nandigram because she was “scared” and that she was also keeping “open” the option of Tollygunge.

“A nervous Mamata Banerjee not only deserts her traditional seat of Bhowanipore but also keeps the option of contesting Tollygunge open. In the press she slips in, ‘I may contest too’ while announcing Arup Biswas’s name for the seat! Pishi is sensing defeat,” Malviya said.

The BJP leaders also claim that Mamata took the decision to shift out of Bhowanipore because of the “large number of Hindus” there. “She knows she would have lost in Bhowanipore,” they said.