Kolkata, The much-talked-about Nandigram – the hotbed of anti-acquisition movement that powered the Mamata Banerjee party to oust the Left Front government eight years back will play a key role in determining the results of Tamluk Lok Sabha seat.
The Nandigram movement raised Trinamool’s popularity graph, and it went from strength to strength to oust the 34-year-old Left Front government in the 2011 Assembly elections. Even though the Parliamentary constituency is called Tamluk, Nandigram is at the centre of it.
The ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) candidate and sitting MP Dibyendu Adhikari eyes to win Tamluk again, which was once dominated by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) till 2009 when TMC candidate Suvendu Adhikari wrested the Lok Sabha seat from CPI (M) leader Lakshman Chandra Seth.
Seth won thrice from 1998 to 2009 in Tamluk when he was in the CPI (M) but was expelled from the party in March 2014 for anti-party activities and after changing multiple political parties he is now the Congress candidate for this year Lok Sabha elections.
In 2014 Lok Sabha election, Trinamool Congress’s Suvendu Adhikari won the Tamluk Lok Sabha constituency defeated his nearest candidate Shek Ibrahim Ali with a massive margin of 246481 votes.
However, by-polls were necessitated after Suvendu Adhikari won the West Bengal assembly election from Nandigram and became a state minister in 2016. In the by-polls, his brother Dibyendu contested a by-poll and retained Tamluk for the TMC.
The Adhikari are the son of Sisir Kumar Adhikari, the Trinamool Congress member of Parliament from Kanthi and former Union minister of rural development in the Manmohan Singh government.
On the other hand, in 2009, the BJP candidate received 1.79 per cent votes in Tamluk. In 2014 Lok Sabha elections, this number increased to 6.40 per cent. In the Lok Sabha by-polls of 2016, this number increased further, and BJP received 15.06 per cent of the votes.
Nandigram is one of the seven Assembly segments that constitute Parliamentary constituency no. 30, Tamluk. The other six are Panskura Purba, Moyna, Nandakumar, Mahisadal, and Haldia.
Among the seven Assembly segments that are part of Tamluk constituency, Left Front had won in three – Tamluk, Panskura Purba, and Haldia. TMC won in Nandigram, Moyna, Nandakumar, and Mahisadal.
Meanwhile, after 12 years, the CPI (M) opened a party office in Nandigram, ahead of the 2019 Indian general elections which were vandalised and set ablaze by furious mobs during 2007 Nandigram agitation.