Calcutta:
BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari has labeled West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee an “outsider” in her decision to challenge the Nandigram state elections, from where she is a member of the MLA. Adhikari, once seen as Ms. Banerjee’s deputy, resigned from the Trinamool Congress before the election dates were announced and joined the BJP.
“The honorable Chief Minister will compete from Nandigram according to the list of candidates, very well, he is welcome. The people of Nandigram raise their voices, ‘We want the son of Midnapore, not outsiders.’ We will see it on the battlefield. On May 2, he will lose and leave, “Mr. Adhikari said today, the ANI news agency reported.
The BJP leader plays on the fact that he is the MLA of Nandigram and therefore a son of Midnapore. Nandigram belongs to the East Midnapore district.
Adhikari’s “outsider” strike against the Chief Minister is also a counterattack against her using the same line of attack that Ms. Banerjee often deploys, that of calling the BJP in Bengal an “outsider” party.
Adhikari, 50, led the Trinamool Congress fight for farmland against a chemical center in Nandigram in 2007 and captured it from the left. Nandigram, and later Singur, catapulted Banerjee’s party to power in West Bengal in 2011.
Banerjee had previously said that he could contest two seats: Nandigram and Bhowanipore in Kolkata, where he won in 2016.
Today, when announcing that he would fight from Nandigram, he made it clear that he would not compete from Bhowanipore. But she did hint that she would run for a second seat, telling Tollygunge’s candidate Aroop Biswas that she could run from there too.
Trinamool Congressional leaders claimed it was made a joke, although BJP said it was a sign of Banerjee’s nervousness.
“I will compete from Nandigram if I stick to my words. From the Bhowanipore constituency, Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay will participate in the next assembly elections,” said Bengal’s chief minister, announcing the candidates for the elections from March 27. .
The Bengal elections will take place over eight rounds and 33 days in a marathon program that, according to Trinamool, was extended on the instructions of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other top BJP leaders.
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