Singur and Nandigram, the very constituencies which propelled the rise of Mamata Banerjee in Bengal, are going to be the drivers of her downfall

Singur and Nandigram – Mamata Banerjee’s two beloved constituencies, both of which she is seemingly set to lose this time around. Singur and Nandigram made Mamata Banerjee what she is. The feisty rebel, the street politician with a ground-connect with the people of Bengal. The obliterator of Left in Bengal. Mamata Banerjee can be described in many ways. Now, however, she is a mere defeatist, with losses on both seats looking like an obvious certainty. The BJP has, in a short span of time, learnt how politics is to be done in West Bengal. If she does indeed lose Singur and Nandigram, Mamata would effectively be thinking of retirement from politics.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP had a lead of 10,500 votes over the TMC in the Singur assembly segment. Singur falls under the Hooghly Parliamentary Constituency where TMC’s Dr Ratna De (NAG) had been defeated by BJP’s state Mahila Morcha president Locket Chatterjee. More than eleven years after Tata Motors was forced to move its Nano car project out of West Bengal’s Singur, ghosts of Mamata Banerjee’s anti-land acquisition movement, orchestrated against the left government, are coming back to haunt TMC in the region. Singur, one of the seven constituencies in the Hooghly Lok Sabha seat, where the Nano plant was located, proved to be a turning point in Banerjee’s political career in 2011 when it helped her end the 34-year-long hegemonic rule of the Left Front in the state. However, farmers of Singur have been regretting their support for Mamata’s political movement in 2008, ever since.

 

Four-time MLA Rabindranath Bhattacharya, fielded by Mamata Banerjee from Singur constituency in 2011 and 2016, who won her the seat and was himself the mind and soul behind the Singur agitation, is now being fielded by the BJP. Already trailing in 2019, the TMC’s Singur fortunes are all set to be tossed into the trash can, now that the BJP has fielded Bhattacharya. Prior to Bhattacharya joining the BJP, the saffron party in any case had an advantage in Singur by 2019. Now, in 2021, that advantage seems to have risen manifold. So that’s that. Singur is sealed for the BJP.

Read more: Mamata is fighting to save the very place that propelled her to power

We now come to Nandigram – the other TMC bastion which was stolen from right under Mamata Banerjee’s nose recently by the saffron party. In Nandigram, where the TMC had a lead of 62,000 votes over the BJP in 2019, Suvendu Adhikari switching to the saffron fold has changed all the equations. He was considered one of the few leaders in Banerjee’s party to have a mass base of his own. Adhikari and his family has a massive influence among the voters of Nandigram and is his citadel. Mamata Banerjee is contesting against him and is bound to lose. In fact, the very purpose of the BJP to challenge her to contest from Nandigram was to ensure that not only does Didi get ousted as the chief minister, but is also unable to get elected as an MLA.

Mamata Banerjee is trying to put up a lot of bravadoes. It must be mentioned that the once ‘rebel’ leader of Bengal has been forced to act according to the narrative set for her by the BJP. Had the BJP not thrown a challenge at her, she would most definitely not even think of entering the stronghold of Suvendu Adhikari, while abandoning her other seat in South Kolkata.

Life has come a full circle for Mamata Banerjee. The two seats – Singur and Nandigram, which propelled her to power will now also result in her downfall.