Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, May 21: Defeated in Nandigram, the West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee is likely to contest from her old seat Bhawanipore to re-enter the state Assembly.
Under the constitution, she needs to get elected within six months to continue as the chief minister. In case she fails, she will have to quit the chief ministerial post.
The Trinamool Congress MLA who won from Bhawanipore, Shobhandeb Chattopadhyay, resigned from the Bengal assembly this afternoon to enable Banerjee to contest from the seat.
Though there is still five months to go before she is required to fulfill the constitutional obligation, Banerjee apparently wants to keep things ready for the Election Commission of India to hold the Bhawanipore by-election in time for her to enter the state Assembly. Banerjee has time and again accused the ECI of being “an agent” of the Narendra Modi government and is apparently skeptical that under pressure from the ruling BJP, the commission might try to delay the by-election to force her to quit the chief ministerial office.
Even though elections for two seats were countermanded last month due to the deaths of the candidates which also would go for by-elections soon, Banerjee is not prepared to take yet another chance and has preferred to return to the comfort of her old seat, where she is also a voter, hoping for an easy victory.
Though she shifted this time to Nandigram taking the challenge from her one-time friend-turned-foe Suvendu Adhikari, who has since joined the BJP, her replacement still managed to win Bhawanipore with a massive margin over his nearest BJP rival, a popular cine artist Rudranil Ghosh. “Mamata Banerjee will fight from Bhawanipore in the coming six months,” Chattopadhyay said before handing in his resignation to Assembly Speaker Biman Bandopadhyay in his Assembly chamber in presence of party leader and state minister Partha Chatterjee and others.
“I personally and the party wants her to contest from Bhawanipore. She will now decide the future course of my political career,” Chattopadhyay added. He will continue as state Agriculture Minister for six months, during which time he will contest from another seat to return to the assembly or might be fielded as the Rajya Sabha candidate of the TMC.
Mamata Banerjee’s landslide victory in the Bengal election to win a third straight term was tempered by her own loss in Nandigram by a narrow margin to the BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari, her former lieutenant. Though initially she was declared elected from Nandigram by a margin of about 1,200 votes, about an hour later the returning officer for the seat declared Adhikari as elected from the seat by a margin of over 1,900 votes. Banerjee’s demand for a recount was also rejected by the returning officer and she was advised to contest the election result in the court.
Weeks after Adhikari quit the Trinamool, Banerjee had declared at a rally on January 18 that she would contest from Nandigram instead of Bhawanipore, which sent her to the assembly in 2011 and 2016. The agitation she had led against the Tata’s in Nandigram about 12 years back had catapulted her as the most popular leader in West Bengal enabling her party to dethrone the CPM that ruled the state uninterrupted for more than three decades.
“I will contest from Nandigram. Nandigram is my lucky place,” she had said at the rally and urged voters of Bhawanipore to understand her decision.
“Nandigram is my big sister, Bhawanipore is my younger sister…I will fight from both if possible. In case I am unable to contest from Bhawanipore, someone else will contest.”
During the campaign, several BJP leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, taunted her about “contesting from a second seat” and questioned whether she was nervous about losing in Nandigram. Banerjee strongly rebutted the possibility.
Shobhandeb Chattopadhyay, 80, won in 2016 from the neighbouring Rashbehari seat and was state Power Minister in the previous term. This time round, Banerjee chose him for the Bhawanipore seat.
