Rohit Kumar
NEW DELHI, Mar 16: Taking the West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee head-on, the BJP has fielded her principal rival and the incumbent Leader of the Opposition in the State Assembly Suvendu Adhikari from both Nandigram in Purba Medinipur and Bhabanipur in Kolkata, the two seats from where the Trinamool Congress supremo had contested in the 2021 elections.
A one-time close associate of Ms Banerjee, Suvendu Adhikari, who defeated her in Nandigram by a thin margin of little over 1,900 votes, this time wanted a re-match and has apparently influenced the party that he be also fielded from Bhabanipur, the seat currently been represented by Ms Banerjee in the outgoing Assembly.
In the first list of the 144 candidates announced by the BJP on Monday for the West Bengal elections, Mr Adhikari has been named as the candidate from the seat in Kolkata, where Banerjee had moved after her defeat in Nandigram in 2021. The Leader of the Opposition in the state assembly will also contest from Nandigram.
It is not yet known where Banerjee will contest from. But there is speculation that she might contest again from Bhabanipur, which has sent her to the state assembly thrice since 2011 – the year when Bengal voted out the CPM and welcomed Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress.
Nandigram is the town that had catapulted Mamata Banerjee to power in 2011. Back then, Adhikari was by her side as she campaigned for land rights for farmers and later became the MLA who represented the constituency in the state assembly.
But in 2021, when the BJP weaponised him against the Chief Minister, Banerjee, who had never backed down from a fight, took the battle in Nandigram, confident that the area will not turn away from its favorite daughter. But Adhikari pitched her as an “outsider” and in a cliff-hanger of a prestige battle, Banerjee lost by a margin of 1,956 votes even as her party swept the state with 213 seats in the 294-member Assembly, coming back to power for a third straight term.
That Nandigram was firmly backing Adhikari became clear the next year too when the BJP swept the election to a cooperative body. Later, the Chief Minister moved to Bhabanipur and contested the by-election, winning it with a margin of over 50,000 votes. This time again the placement of Adhikari – who ahead of the last election had said he wanted to put the word “former” before the Chief Minister’s name – has sent a clear message.
On multiple occasions, Adhikari has been heard saying, “I defeated her in Nandigram; this time I will defeat her in Bhabanipur as well. I will make her a former Chief Minister by a margin of 50,000 votes.” In the recent voter list revision in Bengal, Banerjee’s Bhabanipur constituency has recorded one of the highest voter deletions in the state, logging nearly four times more removals than Suvendu Adhikari’s Nandigram, showed the constituency-wise data released by the Election Commission last week.
Data showed that Bhabanipur in south Kolkata, widely regarded as Banerjee’s pocket borough, recorded 44,787 deletions from the 2,06,295 voters listed in January 2025, while Nandigram saw 10,599 deletions from 2,78,212 voters.
Some of the other names in the BJP list included that of Agnimitra Paul from Asansol Dakshin in Paschim Bardhaman who currently holds the constituency, the party’s chief whip in the Assembly Shankar Ghosh from Siliguri, incumbent MLA and former India cricketer Ashok Dinda from Moyna in Purba Medinipur, actor Rudranil Ghosh from Shibpur in Howrah district, former Rajya Sabha MP Swapan Dasgupta from Rashbehari in Kolkata, (he lost in 2021 from Tarakeswar), Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) councilor Sajal Ghosh from Baranagar, and Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s fifth-generation descendant Sumitra Chattopadhyay from Naihati in North 24 Parganas district.
Former Asansol Mayor and ex-MLA Jitendra Tiwari, a strongman politician who started his career with the TMC and joined the BJP in December 2020, will contest from Pandabeswar in Paschim Bardhaman, while incumbent Haringhata MLA and folk singer Ashim Sarkar will look to retain his seat.
After moving him from his turf, Medinipur, to Bardhaman-Durgapur for the Lok Sabha polls, and former state BJP president Dilip Ghosh has returned to his old constituency Kharagpur Sadar. Ghosh replaces incumbent MLA and actor Hiran Chatterjee, who has not found a space in the first list. The other notable name missing from the first list is former Union MoS for Home Nisith Pramanik.
Following Ghosh’s loss in the 2024 polls — he blamed rivals within the party for his switch to an unfamiliar seat and defeat, insinuating Adhikari had something to do with it — he had drifted from the party. However, he was brought back into the thick of things during Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s visit to Kolkata in January. During the visit, Shah had instructed party leaders to put an end to internal fights. During the rally at the Brigade Parade Ground in Kolkata on Saturday, Ghosh was seen talking to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
By fielding Suvendu from both Nandigram in Purba Medinipur and Bhabanipur, the BJP has decided to take the fight to the CM, who is the TMC’s tallest leader, knocking on her doors and attempting to bind her to the seat. The BJP knows that if it has to win Bengal, it has to somehow find a way to end the myth of Mamata. A second straight defeat from Nandigram, and in the best-case scenario from both seats, will ensure just that.
However, the TMC dismissed that Suvendu, a former Mamata lieutenant, would pose a serious challenge. “Suvendu will lose in both Nandigram and Bhabanipur. The entire BJP is uncertain. They will lose and that is why they are using the Election Commission to transfer officers. Dilip Ghosh got his seat only because he had met CM Mamata Banerjee and received the blessings of Lord Jagannath,” said TMC spokesperson Kunal Ghosh, referring to a meeting between the two leaders last year when Ghosh was sidelined in the BJP.
Another feature of the BJP list is that unlike in 2021, when it brought in several former TMC leaders and gave them tickets, this time it has gone with several from its own rank and file, leaders who have proven themselves over a course of time. It also indicates that the BJP’s pool of candidates is not as deep as that of the TMC, which has yet to release a list of candidates and instead is facing the problem of plenty in several constituencies.
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