Kolkata, April 2 (IANS) The Leader of Opposition in the West Bengal Assembly, Suvendu Adhikari, will be filing his nomination from the Bhabanipur constituency in South Kolkata as a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate on Thursday in the presence of the Union Home Minister Amit Shah.

HM Shah had arrived in Kolkata on Wednesday night. He will be participating in a mega roadshow within the Bhabanipur constituency along with Adhikari before the latter files his nomination.

“HM Shah and Adhikari will start their road show from Hazra intersection, which will start at noon today. After the road show, Adhikari will file his nomination at the Alipore Survey Building. The convoy will stop 200 meters before the Alipore Survey Building. The Union Home Minister and the Leader of Opposition will cover the remaining distance walking, enter the Alipore Survey Building, and thereafter Adhikari will file his nomination,” a state committee member of the BJP said.

At Bhabanipur, Adhikari is pitted against the sitting Trinamool Congress legislator from the constituency and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. Adhikari, this time, is contesting simultaneously from his native constituency of Nandigram in East Midnapore district, where he is a two-time legislator, first for Trinamool Congress from 2016 to 2021 and then for the BJP from 2021 to date.

In 2021, Adhikari got elected, defeating the Trinamool Congress candidate Mamata Banerjee by a margin of a little less than 2,000 votes. Later, she was elected in a by-election from Bhabanipur and retained her chair as the Chief Minister for the third consecutive term.

The contest at Bhabanipur this time is hogging the limelight not just because it is a contest between the sitting Chief Minister and the Leader of Opposition, but also because of the SIR impact.

Bhabanipur is going to the polls this time, with 47,000 fewer voters, who have been deleted in the final voters’ list published on February 28, and the names of a few more thousands of voters have been referred to the ongoing judicial adjudication after being classified under the “logical discrepancy” category.

The Chief Minister has accused the Election Commission of India (ECI) of mass-scale deletion of voters in Bhabanipur. However, she has claimed that she will win from Bhabanipur even if it is with a margin of just one vote.

–IANS

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