The day’s political upheaval began with the withdrawal of Dey, who had been nominated by the Mamata faction only days earlier. She met West Bengal chief minister Suvendu Adhikari at Nabanna on Friday and subsequently withdrew her nomination.
With her faction left without a candidate in Nandigram, Mamata announced her support for Pradhan. “We are supporting the Congress in Nandigram. It is for the greater interest of the country,” she said at a press conference in Kolkata. “We are ready to fight it out.”
Within hours, however, Pradhan was arrested while campaigning. State Congress president Shubhankar Sarkar alleged political vendetta and said, “They will not allow anyone else to contest elections. Democracy will not survive BJP’s aggression; the multi-party system will cease to exist. They want ‘one nation, one party’.”
The BJP rejected the allegation and maintained that the police were acting in accordance with the law.
