West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is trailing over her bete-noire Suvendu Adhikari in the constituency of Nandigram. Adhikari was her right hand man who defected to bitter rivals BJP. Both Banerjee and Adhikari were the faces of the 2007 peasant protests that toppled the ruling CPI(M).
Nandigram, 150 km from Kolkata, was a stronghold of the communists for over six decades until 2007, when the farmers' agitation turned the tide against the left. Since 2008, Nandigram has been a bastion of the TMC, with party candidate Firoja Bibi winning the seat twice, once in a bypoll and then again in 2011. In 2016, Adhikari bagged the seat with nearly 68 per cent votes polled in his favour. The CPI(M) had then managed to garner 54,000 votes. The BJP has since made deep inroads in the area following the 2019 parliamentary polls.
For Suvendu personally, a victory could be a crucial marker in his ascension in the state politics; it can possibly propel him into leading the BJP in Bengal, were the party to win the battle of the hustings.Â
