After the announcement of her party's candidates list, Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday, 9 March, hit the campaign trail in East Midnapore's Nandigram. The West Bengal chief minister brought alive old memories of the Nandigram anti-land acquisition protests, and took a detour to make and serve tea to locals.
"Bhulte Pari Sobar Naam, Bhulbo Nako Nandigram (I can forget everyone's name but I will never forget Nandigram). When I had first visited Nandigram, there was no MLA. I looked at these faces and decided to contest from here. I had my home constituency and it was Bhawanipore. There was no problem and the effort would have been less for me. But still I chose Nandigram as I could see your love and enthusiasm," Banerjee said.
During her campaign, the West Bengal CM also served tea to locals at a tea stall in Nandigram. Visuals of Banerjee show her amid the stall staff, straining and pouring tea in plastic cups.
This is not the first time Banerjee has served tea at amid a public event, she was also seen serving tea to people of Bengal’s Digha in August 2019, NDTV reported.
Earlier, Banerjee had dubbed Nandigram as "lucky" for her. "I will contest from Nandigram. It is my lucky place," Banerjee had declared at a rally in Nandigram in January this year. Quite naturally, the Nandigram Assembly seat turned out to be the centre of attraction for voters in Bengal ahead of the high-octane political battle this year as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had also fielded Mamata's ex-confidante Suvendu Adhikari in that seat.
Nandigram is a stronghold of newly-inducted BJP leader Adhikari who had been elected from the high-profile seat in 2016 and became a minister in the Mamata Banerjee-led state Cabinet. Adhikari had joined the saffron brigade in December last year. The rebel Trinamool leader had claimed earlier he would defeat Banerjee by more than 50,000 votes in Nandigram.
At Tuesday's sabha, Banerjee criticised BJP's campaign strategy as the saffron camp is calling her "an outsider" in Nandigram. "I am a daughter of Bengal. But now I have become an outsider? And people coming to Bengal from other states like Delhi and Rajasthan have suddenly become insiders?" the TMC chief said.
(With inputs from NDTV)
(This story has been edited for length.)
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