Nandigram and Rejinagar bypoll: Ballot without the battle

Bypolls for two Assembly constituencies in West Bengal Nandigram and Rejinagar scheduled for October 6, are turning out to be an electoral exercise without much contest on the ground. Shrabana Chatterjee and Senjuti Sengupta report on thedropouts and intimidation that candidates from non-BJP parties are allegedly facing

Published - September 27, 2026 03:23 am IST

Congress campaigns door to door without its candidate in Nandigram. | Photo Credit: Shrabana Chatterjee

In West Bengal, the Bharatiya Janata Party has the support of 207 MLAs in the 294-member Assembly. Two constituencies are up for bypolls, a situation created because the elected representatives won from other constituencies in the State elections earlier this year.

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The main parties in the fray are the BJP, the Trinamool Congress, the Congress, and the Left. This is the first election in which former Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool will fight on the symbol of a footballer rather than its flowers-and-grass insignia.

Nandigram: a fight for prestige

The Nandigram Assembly seat, with 17 panchayats, has about 2.5 lakh people, of whom about 27% of the electorate is Muslim. This is Suvendu Adhikari’s home district.

Mr. Adhikari has stated several times that the constituency is a prestige fight for him.

During the Vietnam War that peaked in the 1960s, West Bengal’s Left Front, powerful in the State then, protested on behalf of the country, with the slogan: “Amar naam, tomar naam, Vietnam, Vietnam [My name, your name, Vietnam, Vietnam].” In 2007, during the movement against forcible land acquisition for a chemical hub, which saw 14 people die, the Left Front government was still in power.

But this time, the same slogan went against it: it became “Amar naam, tomar naam, Nandigram, Nandigram [My name your name, Nandigram, Nandigram].”

Nandigram, a predominantly rural Assembly constituency in coastal Purba Medinipur district of West Bengal, has been synonymous with political change. The fight against forcible land acquisition brought the downfall of the Left Front government in 2011.

In 2021, when Mr. Adhikari defeated former Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee by a margin of 1,956 votes in Nandigram, the constituency brought to the fore a new leader.

In 2026, he contested and won the seat by a margin of about 9,665 votes. Since he was elected from two constituencies, Nandigram and Bhabanipur, he decided to represent Bhabanipur, where he defeated Ms. Banerjee again.

The BJP has fielded Hasirani Rath, the mother of Mr. Adhikari’s slain personal assistant.

Ms. Hasirani has an emotional appeal because she lost her son in the post-poll violence in West Bengal this year. Her son, Chandranath Rath, was shot dead at point-blank range on May 6, just two days after the BJP came to power in the State for the first time, ending the 15-year-old Mamata Banerjee rule.

“This place has been nurtured by Suvendu Adhikari. Of course he is the only one who will win here,” Ms. Hashirani says, after she offered puja at 13 local temples in the constituency as part of her poll campaign in the last week of September.

“Most people in Nandigram have spontaneously accepted me as the daughter of Nandigram and the mother of their homes,” Ms. Hasirani says.

She insists that Adhikari will remain the leader of the people of Nandigram, and it is not victory that she is concerned about. “We want the margin of the victory to be 1.5 lakh votes,” she adds.

The Chief Minister had urged the people of Nandigram to ensure the highest-ever margin of victory in the constituency.

Former CM Banerjee initially announced her support for Sanchita Pradhan Dey, who withdrew from the contest. Then she supported the Congress nominee from Nandigram, Milan Pradhan. Within hours, he was arrested in a 19-year-old case. He was a leader and activist who was part of Nandigram’s land movement in 2007. Mr. Pradhan has been sent to judicial custody till October 3. His bail plea at the Calcutta High Court was denied on September 22.

“He has always been here at public events; why was he not arrested before? Why arrest him now when he became the Congress candidate?” Arpita, his wife, said in a video message shared by State Congress leaders.

The Left Front has fielded Communist Party of India’s Shanti Gopal Giri for the bypoll.

In the Nandigram bypoll, the Congress is running its campaign on its candidate being arrested by the West Bengal police. “We are all Milan Pradhan. He cannot be here because he was wrongfully arrested. We are all standing here as the candidate,” a campaign member of the Congress said while asking people to vote in the party’s favour.