KOLKATA: Congress has fielded its south Kolkata district president Pradeep Prasad from the high-profile Bhabanipur assembly constituency against Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee and Leader of the Opposition and BJP MLA Suvendu Adhikari in the upcoming elections in West Bengal.
Congress leadership has nominated its youth wing leader Zariatul Hossain in Nandigram constituency in East Midnapore district against Adhikari, sitting MLA of the constituency.
Adhikari, who is contesting from both Bhabanipore and Nandigram seats, had won from Nandigram against Mamata Banerjee in 2021 assembly polls in the state.
Elections in the two hot seats will be held in the last phase polls on April 29.
This is for the first time Congress will contest alone in 294 assembly constituencies in the state since 2011 assembly polls when it had tied up with the Trinamool Congress and defeated CPI-M-led Left Front government in the state.
Since 2016 assembly polls, Congress has been fighting elections making electoral alliance with the Left leaving Trinamool Congress.
Bhabanipur is all set to see a four-cornered fight as CPI-M has also fielded its candidate lawyer Sanjeeb Biswas from the state’s most hot assembly constituency.
Political observers felt that the direct fight will be held between Mamata and Adhikari, leaders of two main rival parties in the state.
Both CPIM and Congress had hardly any significant presence in the last 2021 assembly by-polls in Bhabanipur where Mamata had won with a margin of around 58,000 votes against BJP candidate Priyanka Tibrewal.
This time, Bhabanipur has become a much-publicised constituency because of two factors – deletions of around 48,000 of absent, shifted, dead and duplicate voters from the draft electoral rolls and BJP’s decision to nominate Adhikari from the seat.
With deletions of the voters total number of electors in Bhabanipur has come down to only 1.64 lakhs. Besides the deleted voters, another 14,000 voters have been marked as ‘under adjudication’ by the Election commission of India.