Trinamool candidate list: Mamata Banerjee to contest only from Nandigram, who will be Bhawanipore candidate?

Trinamool Congress chief and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday announced the candidate list for her party for the 2021 Assembly polls of West Bengal. Banerjee herself will contest from Nandigram constituency of East Midnapore district, as she had announced earlier, at a public meeting there.

However, she will not contest from the Bhawanipore seat this time. Banerjee had indicated in the public meeting that she may contest from both Nandigram and Bhawanipore. However, today she said that she is contesting only from Nandigram seat. Sobhabdeb Chattopadhyay, senior leader of the party and minister, will contest from the Bhawanipore seat this time. Chattopadhyay’s seat – Rashbehari – will have a new candidate, Debashis Kumar.

In 2016, Banerjee had won from this seat and got 46.67 per cent votes. Congress’ Deepa Dasmunshi had contested against her, and she came second, followed by the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Chandra Kumar Bose. In 2011, Subrata Bakshi had contested from the seat from Trinamool Congress. He had then vacated the seat for Banerjee, who subsequently won from the seat in the byelections with 77.46 per cent votes, defeating CPI(M)’s Nandini Mukherjee.

The Bhawanipore constituency had undergone major boundary changes during the delimitation procedure around 2011. It was earlier called at various times both Bhawanipore and Kalighat constituencies, and has been a Congress bastion prior to the formation of the Trinamool Congress.