After her own candidate backed out of the Nandigram bypoll, Mamata Banerjee said on Friday that her faction of the Trinamool Congress will now back the Congress nominee. We are together. We will not surrender to the BJP.
She also noted she has the Congress’s support in the fight to claim the name and symbol of the party she founded in 1998: “Rahul Gandhi called me yesterday.
She said the bypoll wasn’t discussed on that call: “I had it in my mind, though I didn’t tell them about the support in Nandigram.”
Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool faction announced Sanchita Pradhan Dey’s name on Sunday; on Thursday, she met Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari, and on Friday, she withdrew from the contest.
Sanchita Dey’s candidature was announced after much speculation that Mamata Banerjee would herself contest the Nandigram bypoll to enter the assembly and fight the TMC factionalism head-on. The Nandigram bypoll was necessitated by Adhikari’s vacating of one of the two seats he won, as he retained Bhabanipur where he defeated Mamata Banerjee in the polls earlier this year. Her faction had announced Sanchita Pradhan Dey as the candidate on Sunday; on Thursday night, Dey is learnt to have met Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari, and on Friday it was revealed that Dey was withdrawing from the contest.
There were also reports that she was open to an alliance with the Congress for the bypolls in Nandigram and Rejinagar. The nominations have already ended for the October 6 contest, so there’s no time for a replacement.
“We had decided earlier; we have given our support to the Congress in Nandigram,” she announced at a press conference where she lambasted the state and Centre’s ruling BJP, Suvendu Adhikari, and the Election Commission of India.
Earlier reporting noted: Sources said the candidate, Sanchita Pradhan Dey, met Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari on Thursday. Earlier reporting noted: Sources said that Dey met West Bengal Chief Minister and BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari on Thursday, the day the Election Commission announced that it was freezing the Trinamool name and symbol and neither the Mamata Banerjee faction nor the Ritabrata Banerjee faction would get to use them for the bypolls in Nandigram and Rejinagar. As for Bengal, where the Congress has long been associated with the Left and not the TMC, Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury took a dig at Mamata Banerjee. “Didi’s candidate for Nandigram ran away. A photo of this meeting also emerged.
This is the same Assembly constituency that the chief of the Trinamool Congress, now the Mamata All India Trinamool Congress, had lost to her one-time lieutenant, Suvendu Adhikari, in 2021.
Now, we await the fate of the candidate from Rejinagar; perhaps he, too, will flee, for they belong to a party of deserters,” he said. He appealed to those who wish to vote against the BJP, “There stands a great banyan tree, the Congress party itself, so voting for the leaves that have fallen from this banyan tree amounts to an insult to the tree,” referring to the fact that Mamata Banerjee formed the TMC in 1998 after leaving the Congress.
Earlier reporting noted: In another jolt to Mamata Banerjee a day after her faction of the Trinamool Congress was not allotted the party symbol and logo, her candidate has withdrawn from the bypoll for the Nandigram seat.
Rahul Gandhi Criticizes Election Commission Decision
Rahul Gandhi, the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, has condemned the recent decision by the Election Commission (EC). He claims it is part of a strategy by the BJP to destabilize rival parties. In response, leaders from Congress’s central unit expressed their solidarity with West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, stating their united front against such maneuvers on social media platform X.
