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BJP shortlists 6 candidates to fight Mamata Banerjee in Bengal by-election; Cong to sit out
West Bengal unit of the BJP on Tuesday proposed six names, including Priyanka Tibrewal and Biswajit Sarkar, to the party leadership in Delhi to pick a candidate to be fielded against Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief Mamata Banerjee from Bhabanipur where the bypoll is scheduled on September 30
Kolkata: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) West Bengal unit on Tuesday proposed six names to the party leadership in Delhi to pick a candidate to be fielded against Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief Mamata Banerjee from Bhabanipur where the bypoll is scheduled on September 30, even as the Congress announced it would not field any candidate against the chief minister.
“We have sent a list of six names to Delhi. The list includes the names of Priyanka Tibrewal and Biswajit Sarkar among others like Tathagata Roy,” said a senior BJP leader on condition of anonymity.
Tibrewal, who is also an advocate, is the vice-president of the BJP’s youth wing in West Bengal. She was one of the petitioners in the post-poll violence cases in the Calcutta high court, which ultimately resulted in the court ordering a CBI probe.
Biswajit Sarkar is the brother of BJP worker Abhijit Sarkar, who was murdered allegedly by TMC workers in Kolkata on May 2, the day election results were declared. Sarkar is among the petitioners who moved the Supreme Court in May, seeking the formation of a special investigation team for probing allegations of violence by TMC workers. The apex court allowed the high court to hear all the petitions.
Abhijit Sarkar’s murder figured prominently in the National Human Rights Commission’s (NHRC) report that was submitted before the high court on July 13. Tibrewal represented many victims in the case, including Sarkar.
The list also includes Tathagata Roy, veteran BJP leader and former governor of Meghalaya and Tripura, who recently slammed some of his party colleagues over the debacle in the West Bengal elections. Rudranil Ghosh, who was the BJP candidate in the constituency in the assembly elections earlier this year, also features in the list. He lost the contest to veteran TMC leader Sobhandeb Chatterjee, who has since vacated the seat for the chief minister to contest the bypoll.
Talking to reporters on Tuesday, West Bengal Congress chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said, “The Congress high command in Delhi has decided that the party will not field any candidate against Mamata Banerjee. It is because that would help the BJP.”
Last week, the Election Commission of India (ECI) announced that bypolls to three assembly seats in the state, including Bhabanipur in Kolkata, would be held on September 30. Counting of votes will take place on October 3. Apart from Bhabanipur, the bypolls will also be held to Jangipur and Samerganj assembly seats.
Banerjee had won from Bhabanipur in 2011 and 2016. In the 2021 assembly polls, she, however, had decided to contest from Nandigram. Even though the TMC returned to power with a sweeping victory winning 213 seats out of the 292 seats where polls were held in eight phases in March and April, she lost by a narrow margin of 1,956 votes to her protégé-turned-adversary Suvendu Adhikari of the BJP.
“It is good that good sense has prevailed, and the Congress has realised that fielding a candidate against Mamata Banerjee may help the BJP in turn. As far as the BJP’s candidates are concerned, they can field their central leadership. They would lose with such a huge margin that in future they would think twice before contesting an election,” said Tapas Roy, TMC leader and spokesperson.
