Mamata Banerjee’s third consecutive win in Bengal was led by several inter party tension and the two supreme parties namely TMC and BJP framed and blamed each other for mishaps during that period. In a surreal end to a rancorous campaign and a contest that was balanced on the knife-edge till the very last EVM was counted BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari defeated West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee by 1,956 votes in Nandigram.
Nandigram was the biggest battleground where chief minister Mamata Banerjee challenged her former cabinet colleague and now BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari. During the counting the condition from Nandigram made Mamata Banerjee pretty anxious. At a point she was gaining at Nandigram and the party assumed its win in the area, but the Nandigram was soon won over by the ‘now BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari’
Earlier, she was declared winner from Nandigram but later it was announced that she had lost to Adhikari. Earlier in the day, when the counting started, BJP’s Adhikari was leading in the seat by more than 8000 votes. But Banerjee closed the gap as the counting progressed. For some time, she was ahead of Suvendu but then the results were declared and Nandigram slipped right through Mamata’s fingers.
Following which, Mamata filed a petition on May 21, 2021 at the Calcutta High Court challenging the assembly election results for the Nandigram constituency. She claimed discrepancies in the calculating process involve bribery, undue influence, spreading enmity, and alleged tampering of EVM. The case was under Justice Kaushik Chanda, the first hearing was on 18th June 2021.
Amid this, a post on social media claimed that she withdrew her petition. The Facebook post reads, “Scared Mamata Banerjee had directed to withdraw the High Court petition challenging the assembly election results for the Nandigram constituency.”
Doing a reverse keyword search, it was found that the claim is false. However, Mamata Banerjee’s lawyer Sanjay Basu wrote a letter to the acting Chief Justice of Calcutta High Court, Rajesh Brindal on June 18, requesting him not to list the case under Kaushik Chanda and to reassign another bench for hearing the petition.
A part of the letter reads, “The adjudication of the Election Petition shall also have political ramifications. My client (Banerjee) has been made aware that Honourable Justice Kaushik Chanda was an active member of the BJP. Thus, in the event the Honourable Judge takes up the election petition, there will be a reasonable apprehension in my client’s mind of bias on the part of the Honourable Judge in favor of the Respondent and/or against my Client.”
On June 24, TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee had appeared before the court via teleconference. Following the hearing on the ‘reassignment of bench’, Justice Chanda, against whom the recusal petition has been filed, has reserved his order. The judge did not specify the date for pronouncement of the verdict.
To confirm the claim, Sanjay Basu, advocate-on-record for Mamata Banerjee reported, “The claim is false. We are not going to withdraw the case and would continue with this case till the final verdict is given. We are now waiting for a judicial order on our plea to reassign the bench. Following this order, the court would fix the next hearing date for the original case.”
Hence, the claim is misleading. Mamata Banerjee has not withdrawn the petition challenging the assembly election result of the Nandigram constituency.
