TMC, BJP cross swords as West Bengal Assembly elections gather steam

As West Bengal gears up for eight-phase polling, the TMC and the BJP cross swords again, as the newly-inducted BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari retaliates against CM Mamata Banerjee's 'outsider' comment.

Former Trinamool Congress leader Suvendu Adhikari attacked Banerjee by terming her as an 'outsider' and appealing to the people of Nandigram to choose the 'son of Midnapore'.

On March 5, Mamata Banerjee, confirmed her candidature only from Nandigram while releasing the list of Trinamool Congress candidates for the upcoming Assembly polls for 291 seats.

Read | West Bengal Polls: TMC bids on new faces to beat anti-incumbency

The chief minister said that she will not contest from her traditional Bhowanipore seat in Kolkata, throwing an open challenge to her protege-turned-rival Suvendu Adhikari, who crossed over to the BJP in December. "I will contest from Nandigram as I stick to my words. From Bhowanipore constituency, Sovandeb Chattopadhyay will contest the upcoming Assembly elections," Banerjee said.

Adhikari claimed that the TMC supremo will lose and leave on May 2, the day when election results are expected to be announced. "Honourable chief minister will contest from Nandigram as per the candidate list, very good, it's welcomed," Adhikari told news agency ANI, said on Friday.

The report also quoted him saying, "People of Nandigram raise your voice, 'we want the son of Midnapore, not outsiders.' We will see you on the battlefield. On May 2, you will lose and leave."

This will be for the first time that Banerjee will be in the poll fray from the Nandigram constituency. Adhikari won from Nandigram in the 2016 Assembly election while another TMC candidate, Phiroja Bibi, emerged victorious from the seat in 2011.

Though Suvendu Adhikari has time and again expressed his desire to take on his former boss directly in Nandigram, the saffron party leadership is yet to take a decision on it.

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 the 34-year-old rule of the Left Front.

During his 'Parivartan Yatra' from Tarapith in Birbhum district and Lalgarh in Jhargram district, BJP president J P Nadda slammed the TMC dividing communities by branding people as "insiders and outsiders".

"Under the Mamata Banerjee's rule, the rich culture and heritage of West Bengal are under threat. Only the BJP can protect it. The insider-outsider slogan is not the real culture of Bengal. The Trinamool Congress is pitting people against one another by branding them as insiders and outsiders. This is shameful. It is not the culture of the land of Swami Vivekananda, Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore," Nadda had said.

(With inputs from PTI)