BJP’s Priyanka Tibrewal To Contest From Bhabanipur Against West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee
Mumbai: BJP’s Priyanka Tibrewal will contest against West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee in the bypoll for the Bhabanipur assembly constituency in south Kolkata.
She was one of the petitioners in the cases of post-election violence in the Calcutta High Court, which eventually resulted in the court ordering a CBI probe.
Meanwhile, Banerjee is going to file her nomination for the by-election to Bhabnipur assembly seat to be held on Friday afternoon.
The Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief needs to win this bypoll to retain his chief minister’s post. The by-polls will be held on 30 September while the counting of votes will take place on 3 October.
Even though the TMC returned to power with a landslide victory, winning 213 of the 292 seats where elections were held in the recent assembly polls, Banerjee, who had contested from Nandigram in Purba Medinipur lost by 1,956 votes to her protégé-turned-adversary Suvendu Adhikari, who moved to the BJP.
The Election Commission of India on Saturday said it will hold elections and bypolls in four declared constituencies in West Bengal and Odisha.
“This election will be a challenge. It will be a big game before the 2024 election. After this game is over, we have to win the by-elections of the remaining four assemblies. Then we have to win the civic polls,” Banerjee said on Wednesday.
Bhabnipur constituency has 206,389 voters, of which 95,143 are female voters, which is around 46%. There is a sizeable population of Sikhs and Gujaratis here. However, the region is dominated by middle-class Bengalis.
The region is located in the heart of South Kolkata and was earlier a Congress stronghold. Later it became a stronghold of Trinamool Congress as Banerjee’s house in Kalighat is located in this constituency. He had won the assembly elections from Bhabnipur in 2011 and 2016.
In the recently held assembly elections, veteran TMC leader Sovandeb Chatterjee had contested from Bhabnipur. She won by over 28,000 votes but later vacated the seat so that Banerjee could contest from the seat to retain her post.
While the Congress has already decided not to field any candidate, the BJP’s unit in West Bengal has proposed six names from which the party’s top leadership in New Delhi is expected to choose one who will be fielded against the Trinamool Congress chief. The Left Front announced the name of advocate Srijib Biswas for the seat.
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