West Bengal: High-Stakes Nandigram Contest Sees Suvendu Adhikari And Former Aide Turn Rival In Crucial Electoral Clash

Nandigram: Nandigram Assembly constituency of East Midnapore has become popular due to the then Leader of Opposition Mamata Banerjee’s land acquisition movement which eventually brought her to power in 2011.

After that Nandigram made it to the headlines again in 2021 when now Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari had defeated Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee by 1956 votes.

In 2026 Assembly election Nandigram which is going for the polls on April 23 is still relevant as Trinamool Congress (TMC) has pitched Pabitra Kar once known as the close aide of Adhikari against Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s candidate and sitting MLA Suvendu Adhikari.

Who is Pabitra Kar?

Pabitra Kar is a former panchayat pradhan of Boyal-1 gram panchayat in Nandigram-2 block. In November 2020 Kar left TMC and had joined BJP just a month before Adhikari’s defection.

Later, Kar became the vice-president of BJP’s Tamluk district organisation and had played a key role in consolidating the BJP’s organisational structure in the Boyal-1 area and was said to be responsible for Adhikari’s victory from Nandigram.

Kar is however, confident about his victory against Adhikari and mentioned time and again that he was disillusioned with the BJP and its policies.

Though TMC is confident of retaining the support of Muslims, who make up 23 per cent of the population, but study shows that a total of 2,826 names have been deleted from the electoral rolls in Nandigram in the supplementary list and of these, 2,700 are Muslims asserting that almost 95 per cent of the Muslims names got deleted.

In 2021, Nandigram had over 68,000 Muslim voters, about 26 per cent of the electorate.

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Talking to Free Press Journal, many voters complained that despite being voters of Nandigram for several years either their names got deleted or sent under ‘adjudication’. Most of the people who complained belonged to the minority group and they even mentioned that in Nandigram’s Kendamari polling booth almost one-third names of the Muslim voters got deleted.

The saffron camp however, is confident of saffron surge again in Nandigram which will work as an example for other assembly constituencies.

Adhikari apart from Nandigram is also contesting at Bhabanipur against Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.

Meanwhile, while addressing election campaign on Tuesday, Mamata without naming anyone stated that BJP’s ‘zamindar’ is trying to intimidate people by blocking roads at several parts of Midnapore including Nandigram.