Mamata's Trinamool Faction Backs Congress in Nandigram After Its Candidate Quits

Mamata Banerjee's faction of the Trinamool Congress will extend its support to the Congress candidate in the Nandigram bypoll, she announced on Friday, hours after her own nominee withdrew from the contest.

The faction had named Sanchita Pradhan Dey, a teacher who lost her job after the cancellation of appointments of 26,000 teachers in connection with an alleged recruitment scam, as its candidate on Sunday. On Thursday night, Dey is understood to have met Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari, and by Friday it emerged that she was pulling out. With nominations already closed for the October 6 contest, there is no scope for fielding a replacement.

Speaking at a press conference, Banerjee said the decision to back the Congress had been taken earlier. "We had decided earlier; we have given our support to the Congress in Nandigram," she said, while attacking the BJP governments at the state and the Centre, Adhikari, and the Election Commission of India.

She also pointed to the Congress's backing in her fight to claim the name and symbol of the party she founded in 1998. Rahul Gandhi, the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, had called her the previous day, she said. "We are together. We will not surrender to the BJP." The bypoll did not come up in that conversation, she added: "I had it in my mind, though I didn't tell them about the support in Nandigram."

The Congress has fielded Milan Pradhan in Nandigram, while the BJP's candidate is Hasirani Rath. Ehteshamul Haq is contesting for the TMC faction led by Ritabrata Banerjee.

Dey's candidature had followed speculation that Banerjee would herself enter the fray in Nandigram to return to the assembly and confront factionalism within the party. There were also reports that she was open to an alliance with the Congress for the bypolls in Nandigram and Rejinagar. The Nandigram bypoll was necessitated by Adhikari vacating one of the two seats he won, having retained Bhabanipur, where he had defeated Banerjee earlier this year.

The withdrawal came a day after another setback for Banerjee, with the Election Commission announcing that it was freezing the Trinamool name and symbol, leaving neither her faction nor Ritabrata Banerjee's group able to use them in the bypolls.

Rahul Gandhi criticised the Commission's decision, alleging a BJP plot to break parties. Congress leaders at the central level said on X that the party stood with Banerjee against such designs.

In Bengal, where the Congress has long been associated with the Left rather than the TMC, Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury took a swipe at Banerjee. "Didi's candidate for Nandigram ran away. Now, we await the fate of the candidate from Rejinagar; perhaps he, too, will flee, for they belong to a party of deserters," he said.

Appealing to those who wish to vote against the BJP, he said, "There stands a great banyan tree, the Congress party itself, so voting for the leaves that have fallen from this banyan tree amounts to an insult to the tree" — a reference to Banerjee having formed the TMC in 1998 after leaving the Congress. He urged voters to extend direct support to the Congress, saying that under Rahul Gandhi's leadership the party is witnessing a resurgence that has the BJP worried.