Hours after Trinamool Congress candidate Sanchita Pradhan announced her withdrawal from the Nandigram bypoll on Friday afternoon, Mamata Banerjee now backs the Congress nominee in the Nandigram bypoll.
“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.
She also noted that 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. We are together. We will not surrender to the BJP.”
A day after her faction of the Trinamool Congress was not allotted the party symbol and logo, Mamata Banerjee’s candidate for the Nandigram seat, Sanchita Pradhan, announced her withdrawal.
Dey’s announcement as the Nandigram candidate ended speculation over whether Banerjee would contest for Parliament from the constituency and return to the Assembly or not.
Fielding a low-profile school teacher from Boyal Primary School in Nandigram raised eyebrows over this decision by Banerjee. Dey had lost her job following the cancellation of the appointments of 26,000 teachers in connection with the alleged teachers’ recruitment scam.
Sources hinted that Dey met West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari on Thursday, hours before she backed out on Friday.
The nominations have already ended for the October 6 contest, so there’s no time for a replacement.
The bypoll for Nandigram, former CM Mamata Banerjee’s constituency, was demanded after Adhikari vacated one of the two seats he won, as he retained Bhabanipur, where he defeated Mamata Banerjee in the polls earlier this year.