In her bid to retain the CM post, Mamata Banerjee will begin her campaign for the assembly by-election in Bhabanipur constituency from Wednesday. The by-polls in three assembly seats – Bhabanipur, Jangipur and Samserganj – will be held on September 30 and the counting of votes will be done on October 3.
The TMC announced last Sunday Banerjee’s name as the party candidate for the Bhabanipur assembly which is considered as her traditional seat. It was vacated by West Bengal Agriculture Minister Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay in May, making way for Banerjee to contest.
The TMC supremo, who lost elections to her bete noire Suvendu Adhikari in Nandigram, will have to get elected to the Assembly within six months of the assembly polls to retain her CM’s chair, in accordance with the constitutional norms.
Meanwhile, the BJP on Tuesday said that it will announce the candidate’s name in a day or two, i.e. Wednesday or Thursday.
BJP state general secretary Sayantan Basu told PTI that names of candidates for Bhabanipur as well two other assembly seats in Murshidabad will be decided “in a day or two”. Earlier in the day, state BJP chief Dilip Ghosh said that a nominee for Bhabanipur might be chosen by Wednesday or Thursday.
The BJP has already announced that Adhikari will not contest the bypoll against Banerjee. “Someone else will contest from Bhabanipur. Suvendu Adhikari has already defeated her. Why will one person defeat her multiple times? This time someone else will,” said Ghosh on Monday.
On the other hand, the Congress – a day after promising to field its candidate against Banerjee – took a U-turn over its stand and said the party will not put anybody against the Trinamool Congress supremo.
As instructed by the AICC, the Congress will neither field any candidate opposite Banerjee nor campaign against her in the run-up to the September 30 bypoll, state Congress president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury told reporters in Baharampur.