After her own candidate backed out of the Nandigram bypoll, Mamata Banerjee said on Friday that her faction of the Trinamool Congress will now back the Congress nominee. We are together. We will not surrender to the BJP.
She also noted she has the Congress’s support in the fight to claim the name and symbol of the party she founded in 1998: “Rahul Gandhi called me yesterday.
She said the bypoll wasn’t discussed on that call: “I had it in my mind, though I didn’t tell them about the support in Nandigram.”
Sanchita Dey’s candidature was announced after much speculation that Mamata Banerjee would herself contest the Nandigram bypoll to enter the assembly and fight the TMC factionalism head-on. The Nandigram bypoll was necessitated by Adhikari’s vacating of one of the two seats he won, as he retained Bhabanipur where he defeated Mamata Banerjee in the polls earlier this year. As Dey withdrew, Mamata faced another setback within a day of a major jolt as the Election Commission announced it was freezing the Trinamool name and symbol; thus, neither the Mamata Banerjee faction nor Ritabrata Banerjee’s group could use them for the bypolls.
Her faction had announced Sanchita Pradhan Dey as the candidate on Sunday; on Thursday night, Dey is learnt to have met Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari, and on Friday it was revealed that Dey was withdrawing from the contest. There were also reports that she was open to an alliance with the Congress for the bypolls in Nandigram and Rejinagar. Rahul Gandhi, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, has criticised the EC decision, alleging a plot by the BJP to break parties. As for Bengal, where the Congress has long been associated with the Left and not the TMC, Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury took a dig at Mamata Banerjee. “Didi’s candidate for Nandigram ran away.
The nominations have already ended for the October 6 contest, so there’s no time for a replacement.
“We had decided earlier; we have given our support to the Congress in Nandigram,” she announced at a press conference where she lambasted the state and Centre’s ruling BJP, Suvendu Adhikari, and the Election Commission of India. Congress’s central unit leaders said on X that the party is with Mamata Banerjee against such plots. Now, we await the fate of the candidate from Rejinagar; perhaps he, too, will flee, for they belong to a party of deserters,” he said.
