File image of West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee. PTI

Assembly Election 2021 LATEST Updates: A day after Amit Shah threw questions at him, Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Monday made a scathing counterattack, calling Shah the “embodiment of communalism”, who is “ready to do anything to nurture communalism”.

The DMK-Congress alliance will wrest Tamil Nadu from AIADMK, predicted an opinion poll released by Times Now-CVoter for the five poll-bound states.

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee will file her nomination papers from the Nandigram seat on 10 March, while her rival and BJP candidate Suvendu Adhikari will do the same two days later, as the stage is set for the Battle Royale in the constituency.

After the release of the party manifesto on Tuesday, the Trinamool Congress supremo would leave for Nandigram in the evening and file her nomination papers the next day, party sources said.

She would then attend a workers’ meet and return to Kolkata on 11 March.

Adhikari, whose name was announced as the BJP candidate from the seat on Saturday, will file the nomination on 12 March.

“After filing nomination papers, he will address a rally there,” BJP leader Kanishka Panda said.

Nandigram, the cradle of the anti-land acquisition movement that catapulted Mamata to power in 2011, will witness her once protege Suvendu Adhikari taking on her on 1 April, in the second of the eight phases of polling.

For 50-year-old Adhikari, the contest in Nandigram will be a fight for his political survival as he had vowed to defeat Mamata by over 50,000 votes in the seat or quit politics.

Adhikari won the Nandigram seat in the 2016 Assembly election, while another TMC candidate emerged victorious from
the constituency in 2011.

The former minister had quit the TMC and resigned from the Assembly last year to join the BJP after having differences with the state’s ruling party.

On the other hand, Mamata will contest the Nandigram seat for the first time after relinquishing the Bhowanipore constituency in Kolkata, from where she had won twice. The TMC supremo has rented a house in Nandigram and will campaign from there.

Elections in Bengal, poised to be a stiff contest between the TMC and the BJP, will be held in eight phases between 27 March and 29 April. Votes will be counted on 2 May.