Bengal Election Results 2021: Mamata Banerjee is nearly 5,000 votes behind Suvendu Adhikari.
New Delhi:
Mamata Banerjee is trailing in early trends in a prestige fight in Bengal’s Nandigram where her BJP rival is her former trusted lieutenant Suvendu Adhikari.
A health warning — these are very early leads.
Nandigram is the town that catapulted Mamata Banerjee to power in 2011.
In 2011, Suvendu Adhikari was Ms Banerjee’s right hand man as she campaigned for farmers’ land rights and rallied people around the Trinamool. He later won from the constituency and for years, the Adhikari family had a firm grip over Nandigram.
Suvendu Adhikari’s switch to the BJP led to a flood of defections from the Trinamool Congress and left her without many top aides.
Suvendu Adhikari has vowed to quit politics if he doesn’t defeat Mamata Banerjee by more than 50,000 votes. Taunting his former mentor, Mr Adhikari has also asked her to be ready with a letterhead that says: “Former chief minister”.
Ms Banerjee, stung by Mr Adhikari’s betrayal, decided to take the fight straight to his stronghold to prove a point. She gave up her constituency Bhowanipore in Kolkata. In her speeches, she said she chose to contest Nandigram “to salute the Nandigram movement” and promised she would never abandon the constituency.
It is while campaigning in Nandigram that the 66-year-old Chief Minister suffered a leg injury; she accused the BJP of a role in the incident, in which her leg was allegedly crushed by her car door by the press of a large crowd. For the rest of the campaign, she was in a wheelchair.