In another jolt to Mamata Banerjee a day after her faction of the Trinamool Congress was not allotted the party symbol and logo, her candidate has withdrawn from the bypoll for the Nandigram seat. This is the same Assembly constituency that the chief of the Trinamool Congress, now the Mamata All India Trinamool Congress, had lost to her one-time lieutenant, Suvendu Adhikari, in 2021.
We won’t bow before the Election Commission. After unending speculation over whether Banerjee would contest the bypoll from the constituency this time and return to the Assembly, her faction of the Trinamool had announced Sanchita Pradhan Dey as the candidate on Sunday. Sources said that Dey met West Bengal Chief Minister and BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari on Thursday, the day the Election Commission announced that it was freezing the Trinamool name and symbol and neither the Mamata Banerjee faction nor the Ritabrata Banerjee faction would get to use them for the bypolls in Nandigram and Rejinagar. The announcement that Dey would withdraw came on Friday afternoon, just as Mamata Banerjee began a press conference to slam the Election Commission for not allotting the name and symbol to her, and allege a BJP hand in it.
A photo of this meeting also emerged. The last day for filing the nominations was Wednesday and, left without a candidate, Banerjee sprung a surprise during the press conference. “The BJP did the same to Uddhav Thackeray’s party. First they broke the Shiv Sena, then the NCP, and they threatened that we should join hands with them. We refused, and that’s why they did this to the Trinamool Congress. The Election Commission’s interim order is illegal. How can they issue it after nominations were filed? These are dirty tricks. We will fight and bounce back,” Banerjee thundered at the press conference.
Because she was seen as a low-profile pick for a seat with such political, and even emotional, significance, the choice of Dey, a teacher at Boyal Primary School in Nandigram who had lost her job following the cancellation of the appointments of 26,000 teachers in connection with the alleged teachers’ recruitment scam, had raised eyebrows. How can they seize my party symbol of 29 years?
Her party, she said, would support the Congress in Nandigram, just days after it denied any such arrangement.
