BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari will file nomination papers from the Nandigram Assembly seat on March 12, ANI reported.
The stage is now all set for the Battle Royale between him and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in the most high-profile seat in the upcoming West Bengal Assembly elections.
On Saturday, after BJP announced his candidature from Nandigram, Suvendu Adhikari had affirmed that he will defeat Mamata Banerjee by over 50,000 votes. He also thanked the BJP top brass and said that he will make the lotus bloom in the state.
TMC MP Sougata Roy, however, said Adhikari will be defeated as people of West Bengal dislike "traitors". "People of West Bengal dislike traitors. It is good that Suvendu is contesting the Nandigram seat. Once he loses, he will get to know his stature and that he was overrated," he said.
Both Banerjee and Adhikari were prominent figures of the anti-land acquisition movement in Nandigram in 2007 that catapulted the firebrand TMC supremo to power in West Bengal in 2011 after ending the 34-year-long rule of the Left Front.
The little-known rural area changed the political landscape of West Bengal after witnessing one of the bloodiest movements against the government's land acquisition for industrialisation.
After years of peace, Nandigram, with 70 per cent Hindus and 30 per cent Muslims, however, is now witnessing political and communal polarisation, with the latter firmly backing the TMC that had controlled the area for the last decade-and-a-half.
The constituency comprises two blocks -- Nandigram I and Nandigram II -- with the first having 35 per minority population and the second almost 15 per cent.
The Election Commission of India had earlier announced that West Bengal will witness eight-phased Assembly polls beginning March 27. The counting of votes will take place on May 2.
(With inputs from ANI)
