Kolkata, Sep 9 (PTI) The battle for the TMC’s name and election symbol is spilling into the Nandigram bypoll, with the rebel faction asking party supremo Mamata Banerjee to contest from there, promising not to field a candidate against her.
The offer, made publicly on Wednesday, is as much an appeal as it is a challenge. In Nandigram, Banerjee suffered one of the most consequential electoral setbacks of her career in 2021, losing to her former lieutenant and BJP candidate Suvendu Adhikari after making the seat the centrepiece of her campaign against the saffron party.
Besides, the rival TMC factions are racing to establish their electoral credentials while their claims to the party’s name and twin-flower-on-grass symbol remain pending before the Election Commission.
“If Mamata Banerjee contests from Nandigram, we will not field a candidate. We want her to contest, win and return to the Assembly,” rebel TMC spokesperson Riju Dutta said outside the West Bengal Assembly.
In the 2026 assembly polls, Adhikari won from Nandigram, besides defeating Banerjee again – this time in Bhabanipur, her home turf. He retained Bhabanipur and vacated the other seat, necessitating the by-poll.
Another rebel TMC MLA, Madan Mitra, said the decision was aimed at preventing a division of the anti-BJP vote and giving Banerjee a clear run in Nandigram.
“If Mamata Banerjee contests from Nandigram, we will not field a candidate. This will show that we have not allowed the BJP to divide the opposition vote,” Mitra said, referring to the allegation that the rebel camp is the ‘B team’ of the saffron party.
He said the rebel faction could have fielded more candidates if it wanted to facilitate such a division. “It will also prove who the BJP’s B-team is. If we were the B-team, we could have made it three or four (contestants) instead of two,” he said.
The proposal comes as the two rival TMC formations prepare for the October 6 bypolls in Nandigram and Rejinagar, even as the Election Commission is yet to decide which faction is entitled to the party’s recognised name and election symbol.
The Ritabrata Banerjee-led rebel faction has maintained that it will stake claim to the TMC’s name and symbol, while also preparing to contest as independents if the poll panel does not settle the dispute in its favour before the nomination process closes.
The faction has called a meeting of its office-bearers to finalise its electoral strategy and candidates. The Mamata Banerjee camp, meanwhile, has indicated that it will announce its nominees shortly.
For the rebel faction, however, Nandigram presents a political opportunity that goes beyond the bypoll arithmetic.
The constituency remains inseparable from the TMC’s story. The anti-land acquisition movement that erupted there in 2007 became one of the defining political battles against the Left Front and helped create the momentum that brought Banerjee to power in 2011 after 34 years of Left rule.
Yet the same Nandigram subsequently became a symbol of the BJP’s challenge to the TMC when Banerjee chose to contest the seat in 2021 against Adhikari, her former aide who had switched sides.
The rebel camp’s challenge has also found an echo from within Nandigram’s old TMC network.
Senior TMC leader Abu Taher asked why Banerjee should not contest the seat now, pointing to what he describes as the neglect of leaders who fought during the Nandigram land movement and remained with the party through its difficult years.
“If the party did not give me a ticket in its good days, why should I seek a ticket in its bad days?” Taher, who is still with the Mamata Banerjee camp, said.
He claimed that he and other local leaders were not consulted when Banerjee decided to contest from Nandigram in 2021.
The 2026 Assembly election defeat has left the TMC facing its most serious organisational crisis in years, with the party’s 80-member legislative group emerging as a major arena of the power struggle. Sixty-five MLAs backed Ritabrata’s claim to the Leader of the Opposition’s post and rejected the nominee supported by the Mamata-led leadership.
The dissidents subsequently convened a special session, elected senior MLA Arup Roy as chairperson and announced a parallel national leadership structure, arguing that the existing leadership under Mamata Banerjee had lost the confidence of a majority of elected representatives.
The Election Commission’s eventual decision on the party’s name and symbol could determine which faction gets the institutional advantage. But the Nandigram contest is already becoming a test of something more intangible: which side can claim the TMC’s political inheritance.
The nomination process for the October 6 bypolls began on Wednesday. The last date for filing nominations is September 16, scrutiny will be held on September 17 and candidates can withdraw by September 19. Counting is scheduled for October 9.
Against that backdrop, the rebel camp’s Nandigram offer to Banerjee may be less about giving her a free run and more about forcing a political choice.
“For Banerjee, accepting the challenge would mean walking back into the constituency that once symbolised both her movement politics and one of her rare electoral reverses. Rejecting it could give the rebels another opening to question her willingness to return to a battlefield that remains central to the TMC’s political mythology,” a Kolkata-based political analyst said.
Either way, Nandigram is once again shaping up to be more than a bypoll. PTI PNT NN
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