Mamata Banerjee-led faction of the Trinamool Congress (TMC) suffered another major political jolt on Saturday as Rabiul Alam Chowdhury, the party’s candidate for the Rejinagar by-election, decided to withdraw his nomination.
Chowdhury has announced his decision to withdraw his candidature, citing the primary reason as the failure to secure the Trinamool Congress party symbol—the ‘Twin Flowers’, news agency ANI reported. However, the Nandigram bypoll has taken a dramatic turn as Mamata Banerjee’s candidate Sanchita Pradhan Dey withdrew from the race, prompting the former West Bengal CM to back Congress nominee Milan Pradhan, who was arrested later in a two-decade-old case.
On the other hand, Pradhan Dey had met chief minister Suvendu Adhikari along with her husband Satyajit before withdrawing her nomination, a day ahead of the deadline, news agency PTI reported. “The arrest of Congress candidate Milan Pradhan for the Nandigram by-election is no coincidence—it is political revenge, the murder of democracy. “They don’t want to contest elections; they want to end the electoral fight altogether. The Congress will neither fear nor bow down. We will fight—and we will win,” he added in the post.
Leader of the opposition in Lok Sabha and Congress MP Rahul Gandhi, in a post on X, claimed on Friday that Pradhan’s arrest was “no coincidence,” but rather politically motivated. The BJP has no faith in fair elections—that’s why it wants to cling to power sometimes through vote theft, sometimes through stealing governments, and sometimes through stealing parties,” Gandhi said.
