NEW DELHI: BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari on Friday “welcomed” West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s decision to contest the upcoming elections from his home turf of Nandigram and asserted that the TMC supremo will “lose and leave” on May 2 when the results are declared.
Earlier today, Mamata released the list of 291 TMC candidates for the elections and announced her decision to contest from Nandigram instead of her current constituency of Bhawanipore.
Mamata’s decision is likely to pave way for a title clash with Adhikari, her former aide who had switched over to the BJP just days before the elections.
Welcoming Mamata’s move, Adhikari said that he will see the TMC chief on the battlefield and claimed that come May 2, she will “lose” the elections and “leave”.
“Honourable CM will contest from Nandigram as per the candidate list, very good, it’s welcomed,” Adhikari said while addressing his supporters.
“People of Nandigram raise your voice, ‘we want the son of Midnapore, not outsiders’,” he added.
Ironically, Adhikari used the word “outsiders” for Mamata, a term which has been used by the TMC chief in the run up to the elections and strongly opposed by the BJP.
This will be for the first time that Banerjee will be in the poll fray from Nandigram constituency represented by Suvendu Adhikari in 2016 and another TMC candidate in 2011.
Banerjee and Adhikari were the prominent figures of the anti-land acquisition movement in Nandigram in 2007 that ultimately catapulted the firebrand Trinamool Congress supremo to power in West Bengal in 2011 ending 34-year-old rule of the Left Front.
(With inputs from PTI, ANI)