Kolkata : West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will lock horns with opposition leader Suvendu Adhikari in Kolkata’s Bhabanipur, setting up a mouthwatering contest in the 2026 assembly elections. In Nandigram, where Suvendu is the sitting MLA, the TMC has fielded Pabitra Kar, a former BJP panchayat chief and a close aide of the former Trinamool leader.
Suvendu, a one-time loyalist of Mamata, defeated the TMC chief by a little less than 2,000 votes in Nandigram in 2021. It prompted Mamata to contest from Bhabanipur to get back in the state assembly. She won the bypolls by over 58,000 votes. By fielding Suvendu from Bhabanipur, the BJP has taken the battle to Mamata’s home turf. She has won the seat three times since 2011.
The BJP can take comfort from the TMC’s underwhelming performance in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls in the seat. Sovandeb Chattopadhyay, a senior TMC leader, won from Bhabanipur in 2021, but he resigned, necessitating a bypoll in October 2021. Mamata won the bypoll, beating Priyanka Tibrewal with a margin of over 58000 votes.
The Special Intensive Revision of the electoral rolls in West Bengal resulted in the deletion of 47,294 voters in Bhabanipur, which had 2,06,295 voters at the beginning of the process. Besides, 14,154 voters of the constituency had been placed in the “under adjudication” category.
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