KOLKATA: It is going to be a Mamata Banerjee-versus-Suvendu Adhikari fight in Nandigram.
BJP national general secretary Arun Singh announced Adhikari's candidature from the seat at the party headquarters in Delhi on Saturday while releasing a list of 56 candidates for the 60 seats going to vote in the first two phases of the eight-phase Bengal polls beginning March 27.
Several East Midnapore and West Midnapore nominations have gone to defectors, with the most prominent of them being Adhikari himself. Other defectors to have got tickets in East and West Midnapore are Tapasi Mandal (Haldia, outgoing CPM MLA), former Trinamool zilla parishad office-bearers Amulya Maiti (Sabang) and Ramprasad Giri (Narayangarh), former Trinamool Ramjibanpur Municipality chairman Shibram Das (Chandrakona) and former CPM Paschim Midnapore zilla parishad chairperson Antara Bhattacharya (Pingla). Another defector, outgoing Congress MLA Sudip Mukherjee, has been named from Purulia.
Altogether, the BJP has announced candidates for 30 out of East and West Midnapore’s 31 seats. It is yet to name the candidate for Kharagpur Sadar from where Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh made his debut entry in the assembly in 2016. Ghosh resigned as MLA after he got elected from the Midnapore Lok Sabha constituency in 2019. The BJP also didn’t announce candidates for Kashipur in Purulia and Barjora in Bankura. The Baghmundi seat in Purulia has gone to ally All Jharkhand Students’ Union (AJSU).
Another key contest will unfold in West Midnapore’s Debra. Trinamool nominated former IPS officer Humayun Kabir on Friday; the BJP on Saturday nominated another ex-IPS officer, Bharati Ghosh.
The BJP has fielded cricketer Ashok Dinda from the Moyna assembly seat in Purba Midnapore and retired IIM-C professor Ambujaksha Mahanti from Patashpur.
The Mahato community (kudmis), fighting for recognition as scheduled tribes, has been given representation in three general category seats — Gopiballavpur, Balarampur and Joypur — as against santhals, who got tickets in seven seats reserved for scheduled tribes. The Bauri community has also found fair representation in the 12 seats reserved for scheduled castes.
BJP’s chief campaigner in the first two phases, Suvendu Adhikari, has resorted to using the “outsider” slogan against Mamata Banerjee, who has slapped the same tag on national BJP leaders like PM Narendra Modi, Union home minister Amit Shah and BJP president J P Nadda. “Nandigram wants a son of the soil. Voters here won’t support an outsider coming after five years. She has fled from her home turf because the party didn’t win in the Mitra Institution polling centre where she casts her vote,” Adhikari said.