Mamata Backed Congress in Nandigram, Then Police Came

Mamata Banerjee endorsed the Congress candidate in Nandigram on September 18, and West Bengal Police arrested him about an hour later. The backing came after her own nominee quit following a meeting with Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari, and a day after the Election Commission stripped both Trinamool factions of the party name and mark she had used since 1998.

Congress leaders had already called the freeze an attack on every party. By nightfall they were defending a man in custody, and the Nandigram bypoll had become a joint complaint rather than a joint campaign.

The Flowers and Grass Left the Ballot

On September 17 the full Commission, chaired by Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, sat as Dispute Case No. 01 of 2026 and froze the Flowers and Grass symbol reserved for the All India Trinamool Congress in West Bengal, Meghalaya and Tripura. Neither the group led by Mamata Banerjee nor the group led by Arup Roy, with Assembly Leader of the Opposition Ritabrata Banerjee as its public face, could print the old name “simplicitor” on a nomination.

Both sides had until 11 a.m. on September 18 to send three names and three free symbols. Mamata’s camp filed at 11.36 p.m. on the 17th: Mamata All India Trinamool Congress, All India Trinamool Congress Mamata, and Trinamool Mamata Congress, with a football player or a cricket bat. The Roy camp sent Nationalist Trinamool Congress, West Bengal Trinamool Congress and Democratic Trinamool Congress, with an envelope, a blackboard or a torch.

The Commission took the first name and first mark on her list, and the third name and first mark on theirs. She will fight as Mamata All India Trinamool Congress on a football player. They will fight as Democratic Trinamool Congress on an envelope. Both groups are to be treated as recognised parties in the three states for these bypolls. The original name and mark stay locked until a final ruling.

Ritabrata Banerjee, asked about the football player, pointed at a sculpture that once stood outside Salt Lake Stadium and said someone was “now playing football.” The joke did not return the jora phool to the machine.

THE NANDIGRAM BYPOLL FIELD

The football player may still appear at Rejinagar, where her camp has kept Rabiul Alam Chowdhury in the field. In Nandigram it has no candidate left to print it on.

The Commission Froze a 28-Year Name

The legal hook is paragraph 15 of the Symbols Order, the clause that lets the Commission decide, when rival groups each claim to be a recognised party, that one of them is the party, or that none of them is, for now. The freeze is the “none” path, used so returning officers do not reject every Trinamool paper before October 6.

Neither of the two groups led by Shri Arup Roy (Petitioner) and other led by Ms. Mamata Banerjee (Respondent) shall be permitted to use the name of the party “All India Trinamool Congress” simplicitor, nor use the symbol “Flowers & Grass.”

Election Commission of India, Dispute Case No. 01 of 2026, September 17

The fight did not start that night. Ritabrata Banerjee told the Commission the National Working Committee’s tenure ended on February 11, 2025, and that a special session at the Novotel in Kolkata on June 22, 2026, had elected Arup Roy, a founding member, as chairperson. Mamata Banerjee, the same week, sent a new list of office-bearers from a National Working Committee meeting on June 20. Each side asked the Commission to treat the other list as void.

Hearings ran through July, August and September. On September 17 the benches of Gyanesh Kumar, Vivek Joshi and Sukhbir Singh Sandhu heard both delegations at 3 p.m. and issued the interim bar that night. The Election Symbols Order of 1968 is built for exactly this kind of split. It is also the tool Rahul Gandhi, the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, named when he wrote that the same pattern had already run through Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party.

“It’s the fight of every political party, every voter who wants free and fair elections,” Gandhi wrote, before Mamata Banerjee had given her own statement. K.C. Venugopal, the Congress general secretary for organisation, demanded that the original mark go back to her camp. She moved the Supreme Court on September 18, arguing that the Commission had leaned on rebel legislators who already face disqualification under the Tenth Schedule, and she filed a separate plea on delay in those cases against 10 MLAs.

Suvendu Adhikari Vacated the Seat He Still Runs

Nandigram is empty because Adhikari won it and Bhabanipur in the 2026 Assembly election and, on May 15, handed Speaker Rathindra Bose his resignation from Nandigram so he could keep the Kolkata seat where he beat Mamata Banerjee. IndiaVotes, drawing on Commission figures, gives the BJP 207 of 294 Assembly seats and 46.24% of the vote, against 80 seats and 41.16% for the All India Trinamool Congress. He took Bhabanipur by 15,105 votes and Nandigram by 9,665 votes against Pabitra Kar.

BENGAL ASSEMBLY, 2026

• BJP seats: 207 in a 294-member House, with 148 needed to govern.
• AITC seats: 80, after 15 years in office.
• Bhabanipur: Adhikari beat Mamata Banerjee by 15,105 votes.
• Nandigram: He beat Pabitra Kar by 9,665 votes, then gave the seat up.

The BJP has put Hasirani Rath on the bypoll ballot. She is the mother of Chandranath Rath, Adhikari’s personal assistant, who was killed after the Assembly results. Adhikari, Samik Bhattacharya, Mithun Chakraborty and Dilip Ghosh sit on the party’s star-campaigner list. On September 15, at Rath’s nomination, Adhikari said the deposits of Mamata’s camp, Ritabrata’s camp, the Left and the Congress would be forfeited, and that he would be in the counting hall.

Photographs of Sanchita Pradhan Dey with him circulated on September 18. She is 46, a schoolteacher, a former functionary of the East Midnapore Zilla Parishad, named by Mamata’s camp only on September 13. She went with her husband, Satyajit, then withdrew at the Haldia sub-divisional office, a day before the September 19 deadline. She could not be reached. The reasons were not stated.

Why Was Milan Pradhan Arrested After 4 p.m.?

Mamata Banerjee spoke at her Kalighat house, 30B Harish Chatterjee Street, her first press conference since the May 4 results, and said she would not replace Dey. “In Assam, we are supporting Congress. In Nandigram, too, we are supporting Congress. We have taken this decision in the larger interest of the nation and to further strengthen INDIA alliance,” she said. She called Congress a sister party and a natural ally, and said Rahul Gandhi had called on Thursday and Arvind Kejriwal had sent a message. “We had decided on our own to support Congress in Nandigram. They (Congress) were not aware of our decision.”

The announcement landed around 4 p.m. Around 5 p.m., police took Milan Pradhan, a Sonachura resident and a known face of the 2007 land agitation, off the road in Nandigram. Congress workers later said he had been picked up from a hotel and that they were allowed to see him only about 1.45 a.m. State Congress president Subhankar Sarkar said an Election Commission official told him he did not know of the arrest. Observer Subhashis Bhattacharya was taken with him.

FRIDAY IN NANDIGRAM

1. September 18, morning: The Commission allots the football player and the envelope.
2. September 18, afternoon: Sanchita Pradhan Dey withdraws after meeting the chief minister.
3. September 18, about 4 p.m.: Mamata Banerjee backs Milan Pradhan and the Congress nominee in Nagaon.
4. September 18, about 5 p.m.: Police arrest Pradhan on warrants from four 2007 murder cases.

Ritabrata Banerjee said his party had lodged a case on the pending warrants. The other Trinamool, not only the BJP’s police, pulled the file. Gandhi wrote that the arrest was “no coincidence, it is political vendetta and the murder of democracy,” and that the BJP “doesn’t want to contest elections; they want to end the electoral fight altogether.” Mamata Banerjee wrote that the timing “reflects the usual BJP formula: dig up an old case right after we announce support to Congress.”

The BJP has no faith in fair elections, that’s why it wants to cling to power sometimes through vote theft, sometimes through stealing governments, and sometimes through stealing parties. They don’t want to contest elections; they want to end the electoral fight altogether. The Congress will neither fear nor bow down. We will fight, and we will win.

Rahul Gandhi, Leader of the Opposition, Lok Sabha, September 18

An arrest does not strike a nomination by itself. Custody does starve a campaign. On September 19 Congress leaders went to the Haldia sub-divisional court to seek his production and release. Mahua Moitra, the Krishnanagar MP in Mamata’s camp, told Nandigram voters to treat a jailed candidate the way other seats have.

Indians voted in many candidates even while in jail. Rashid Engineer from jail defeated Omar Abdullah in Baramullah. Amritpal Singh from jail won Khadoor Sahib by 2 lakh votes. Nandigram voters – reject democracy’s murder. Vote for Milan Pradhan.

— Mahua Moitra (@MahuaMoitra) September 19, 2026

The 2007 Cases Never Left the File

Pradhan’s own election affidavit listed 12 criminal cases from 2007, including four murder cases filed when the Left Front still ran the state. All 12 sit before the Haldia chief judicial magistrate. Charges have not been framed in any of them. The four murder warrants used on September 18 were issued in 2021 (three of them) and 2023 (one), years when Trinamool still held Writers’ Buildings. The cases were not a BJP invention. The choice to execute them on the afternoon she endorsed him is the political fact.

WHAT HIS AFFIDAVIT ALREADY SAID

• Twelve cases: All from the 2007 Nandigram agitation, still pending in Haldia.
• Four murder cases: Filed by the then Left Front government; charges not framed.
• Four warrants: Three issued in 2021, one in 2023, then used on September 18.
• No bar on the papers: Custody does not, by itself, cancel the nomination.

BJP voices called the ticket a “Murder Ki Dukaan.” V. Gurunadham, an Andhra Pradesh Congress vice president, said Pradhan had been on bail, that a warrant for non-appearance was ordinary process, and that the question was why it was served after the Congress nomination and the Trinamool backing. Both things can be read from the same docket: the cases are old and real, and the clock started when he became the opposition’s last body on the seat.

Nandigram is where the 2007 land fight broke the Left, where Mamata Banerjee and the Congress walked together into 2011 and ended 34 years of Left Front rule, and where Adhikari, once her lieutenant, beat her in 2021 before beating her again in Bhabanipur in 2026. Almost 28 years after she walked out of Congress to found the All India Trinamool Congress, she is asking that party to carry a seat she can no longer put her own name on.

Mamata Holds Back on Rejinagar

The pact is narrower than the press conference made it sound. She said she would decide on Rejinagar later. That seat fell vacant when Humayun Kabir of the Aam Janata Unnayan Party, who had also won Nowda, resigned. Congress has Mohd Abdullahil Kafi there. Her camp still has Rabiul Alam Chowdhury. Weeks before the freeze she had floated a swap, Congress backing her in Nandigram if she backed Congress in Rejinagar. Friday’s script ran the other way, and only on one of the two Bengal seats.

THREE BYPOLLS ON OCTOBER 6

• Nandigram: Vacated by Adhikari; Mamata’s nominee gone; Congress nominee in custody; counting on October 9.
• Rejinagar: Vacated by Humayun Kabir; she has not extended the Congress backing.
• Nagaon (Lok Sabha): Vacated when Pradyut Bordoloi moved to the Assam Assembly; she is standing her unit down behind Sibamoni Bora.

In Assam the freeze hit the Nagaon ballot as well. Sherman Ali Ahmed, the Trinamool convenor in the state, said the unit was “deeply shocked” and would not run Abdul Salam, the man it had already named. Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge has cleared Sibamoni Bora, a former Batadrava MLA. Mamata Banerjee said, “We will not contest the Nagaon Lok Sabha by-election in Assam.” Polling there is also on October 6, counting on October 9, the same calendar as the two Bengal seats.

Local Congress in Bengal has spent a decade accusing Trinamool of poaching its people. That memory has not been repealed. What changed on September 17 and 18 is the paperwork. She no longer holds the name she put on every booth since 1998, her Nandigram candidate has walked to the chief minister, and the substitute she then adopted is in the Haldia lock-up on warrants her own years in office did not close. The Commission has said the whole process should be finished before October 11. Hasirani Rath will still be on the Nandigram machine. So will Mohammad Eteshamul Haque. The grass and twin flowers will not.