Mamata Banerjee to face ex-aide Suvendu Adhikari as BJP rival in Bengal polls

Mamata Banerjee will face off against her former lieutenant Suvendu Adhikari for Nandigram in the Bengal polls 2021, which will begin later this month.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday announced names for 57 seats for the Bengal polls, reports NDTV.

In December, the 50-year-old former transport and environment minister resigned and joined the BJP in the presence of Amit Shah. 

He has been the Trinamool MLA for Nandigram since 2016 and is widely regarded as the BJP's most significant acquisition ahead of the elections.

Mamata Banerjee rolled up her sleeves for the war on Friday, declaring that she would only fight from one seat, Nandigram.

She had previously stated that she would run for her old seat of Bhowanipore, but she clarified the situation yesterday by handing over the Bhowanipore seat in Kolkata to her power minister, Sovandeb Chattopadhyay.

Just before that, Suvendu Adhikari's father Sisir Adhikari who is a Trinamool MP and has avoided comment on the rift between his son and Mamata Banerjee said yesterday that her decision to take on his son would boomerang on her.

The Adhikari family, headed by Sisir Adhikari and comprising sons Suvendu, Dibyendu and Soumendu have a stranglehold over the Purba Midnapore district.

Sisir Adhikari is Trinamool MP from Kanthi, his son Dibyendu is Trinamool MP from Tamluk in the district. Soumendu was chairperson of Kanthi municipality till his recent removal and Suvendu was the MLA from Nandigram. The district has a substantial Muslim population.

Mr Adhikari was virtually the architect of the ouster of the Left from Nandigram in 2007 after a bloody battle over land rights of farmers in the area where the CPM government wanted to set up a chemical hub. Trinamool's sweep in Nandigram in 2007 is one of the key factors that catapulted Mamata Banerjee to power in 2011.

The BJP's announcement incontrovertibly made Nandigram the most important contest of this election has been set up at Nandigram, with the two-time Chief Minister taking the fight straight to the BJP and, symbolically, all those who ditched her for the BJP.

This week, Suvendu Adhikari had told the BJP leadership that he was confident of defeating Mamata Banerjee by "at least 50,000 votes" in Nandigram. But a final decision on fielding him against the top Trinamool face was left to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, according to sources.

Responding to her announcement on Friday, Mr Adhikari flipped the "outsider" tag used by Mamata Banerjee against the BJP, and paint himself as a "son" of Midnapore - the region that Nandigram falls in.

The Left-Congress-ISF combine has not yet decided which party will fight in Nandigram. The ISF had said they could like to field a member of the family of its leader Pirzada Abbas Siddiqui from Nandigram.