West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has moved the Calcutta High Court challenging the election results at the Nandigram Assembly constituency. She has filed an election petition which will be mentioned on Friday before Justice Kausik Chanda.
Ms. Banerjee lost the elections at Nandigram to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Suvendu Adhikari by a narrow margin of 1,956 votes. Alleging irregularities in the counting process, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) chairperson has said that she would challenge the results before the Court.
The TMC registered a massive victory in the recently concluded West Bengal Assembly polls, winning 213 seats in the 294-member house. Mr. Adhikari, who had defected from the TMC to the BJP and won from Nandigram, is now Leader of Opposition in the State Assembly.
Since Ms. Banerjee is not a member of the West Bengal legislature, she will have to get re-elected to the State Assembly within a period of six months. TMC MLA from Bhawanipur Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay has resigned as an MLA, paving a way for Ms. Banerjee to seek a reelection from the constituency she had represented from 2011 to 2021.
The Election Commission of India is yet to announce by-polls for Bhawanipur and certain other Assembly constituencies in the State.
