Nandigram bypoll candidate from Mamata camp withdraws from race after meeting CM

TMC's Sanchita Pradhan De withdrew her Nandigram bypoll candidature hours after meeting Chief Minister and sitting MLA Suvendu Adhikari. Her decision came on the day the Election Commission allotted new symbols to the rival camps led by Mamata Banerjee and Ritabrata Banerjee.Sanchita Pradhan De, the Mamata faction’s TMC candidate, met Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari at the state secretariat, Nabanna, hours before announcing her decision to withdraw her candidature.The Trinamool Congress (TMC) candidate from the Mamata Banerjee camp, Sanchita Pradhan De, withdrew her candidature from the upcoming crucial Nandigram poll, with barely a month to go, hours after she met the Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari at the state secretariat in Nabanna.While sources had earlier described it as a courtesy meeting, given that Suvendu Adhikari is both the sitting MLA of Nandigram and the Chief Minister, political circles had already begun attaching significance to the meeting. This came as Sanchita Pradhan De announced her withdrawal on a day when Mamata Banerjee’s camp received a new symbol from the Election Commission for the upcoming bypolls in Rejinagar and Nandigram.Incidentally, De’s decision to meet Suvendu, reportedly in secrecy, came moments after the Election Commission assigned Mamata’s camp the symbol of a football player and her rival camp, led by Ritabrata Banerjee, the ‘envelope’ as its party symbol.Hitting out at the BJP as a “jumla party”, Mamata Banerjee lashed out at the party at a press conference soon after De’s withdrawal of candidature and announced that her camp would back the Congress candidate instead, saying that she was with the INDIA bloc. "We are ready to fight it out. I want BJP to go from India. Our full solidarity with the INDIA bloc," she said that her party will not field any candidate from there.This is a developing story. It will be updated. - EndsPublished By: Shipra ParasharPublished On: Sep 18, 2026 16:00 IST