It was this constituency that catapulted Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to power on the back of the land acquisition movement in 2007. The agitation paved the way for the Trinamool Congress’ victory in the 2011 Assembly elections, ending 34 years of Left rule in West Bengal.
Fourteen years later, the seat has emerged as the defining battle of the 2021 elections.
Banerjee has relinquished her old constituency, Bhowanipore, to fight against her former aide Suvendu Adhikari, who switched over to the Bharatiya Janata Party in December. Adhikari’s exit sparked an exodus of TMC leaders who joined the saffron camp in the following months.
Also in the fray is, Congress-Left-ISF alliance’s candidate Minakshi Mukherjee of CPI-M.
The Nandigram Assembly seat has been with Trinamool since 2009, when the party won the bye election there. Before that it was a Congress and then a Communist Party of India stronghold, according to The Indian Express.
In the 2016 Assembly elections, Adhikari…