West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari on Wednesday, May 13, announced that he will retain the Bhabanipur Assembly seat and give up Nandigram.
In the recently concluded 2026 Assembly elections in West Bengal, Adhikari secured a victory from both the Bhabanipur and Nandigram seats. In Bhabanipur, Adhikari defeated former chief minister and TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee by 15,105 votes and left behind TMC’s Pabitra Kar by 9,665 votes in Nandigram.
On Wednesday, Adhikari took oath in the state Assembly as an MLA from Bhabanipur.
“I cannot take oath as an MLA from two Assembly Constituencies. I have taken oath as the MLA from Bhabanipur. I will have to leave the Nandigram Assembly Constituency,” ANI quoted Adhikari as saying.
He further stated that someone else will be elected as MLA from Nandigram in a bypoll.
“But I will not let the people there feel my absence during the next five years… I will fulfil all development promises I made to the people of Nandigram alongside the rest of the state,” Adhikari told reporters at the Assembly premises,” he added.
While referring to the 2009-2016 tenure of Phiroja Bibi as a TMC MLA from Nandigram when Adhikari was a frontline leader of Mamata Banerjee’s party, he said, “I had provided all support to Phiroja Bibi, the mother of a martyr in the 2008 Nandigram police firing, although I wasn’t officially the MLA from that seat.”