Nandigram, the constituency in West Bengal's Purba Medinipur district that once handed All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) founder Mamata Banerjee the moral ammunition to dismantle 34 years of Left rule, has now completed a brutal full circle — her candidate withdrew ahead of the 6 October by-election, leaving the former Chief Minister without even a nominee in the seat that made her.

How Nandigram Built Mamata Banerjee

The story begins in 2007, when the Left Front government led by Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee moved to acquire farmland in Nandigram for a Special Economic Zone (SEZ). Farmers, fearing displacement and the collapse of their livelihoods, rose in resistance that quickly swept across East Midnapore. The agitation found an organisational backbone in Suvendu Adhikari, then a close Mamata aide, who reportedly mobilised villagers and channelled grassroots anger into a sustained movement.

On 14 March 2007, the standoff reached a tragic climax when police opened fire on protesting villagers, killing at least 14 people and injuring scores more. The incident sent shockwaves across the state and handed Banerjee a powerful moral platform.

She fused Nandigram with the parallel agitation at Singur in Hooghly district — where Tata Motors' Nano factory project faced fierce farmer opposition — and wove both struggles into her rallying cry: "Ma, Mati, Manush" (Mother, Earth, People). The narrative cast her as the champion of the dispossessed against an authoritarian industrialisation drive. By 2011, that accumulated anger translated into electoral history: the Left Front fell after 34 years in power, and Mamata swept into the Chief Minister's chair.

The Adhikari Factor and the 2021 Shock

Suvendu Adhikari was elected MLA from Nandigram in 2016, consolidating a family dominance in East Midnapore that stretched back to his father, Sisir Adhikari — influential first in Congress, then in the Trinamool — and extended to his brothers. In 2020, however, Suvendu broke with the TMC leadership and crossed over to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Mamata responded with her most audacious electoral gamble: in the 2021 Assembly elections, she vacated her safe Bhabanipur seat to contest Nandigram directly against Adhikari. The fight became a national spectacle, far larger than any single constituency battle. The result stunned the country — Suvendu defeated Banerjee by 1,956 votes, a margin that carried enormous symbolic weight given the seat's history. She retained her Chief Ministership through a subsequent Bhabanipur by-election, but the Nandigram defeat left a wound that never fully closed.

The 2026 Rout and the Candidate Crisis

Five years on, the wound has deepened. In this year's April 2026 Assembly elections, Suvendu Adhikari not only consolidated his own position but reportedly rose to Chief Minister of West Bengal, defeating Mamata Banerjee in the Bhabanipur constituency itself — the seat she had used to recover after the 2021 Nandigram loss.

The electoral rout accelerated the TMC's internal fractures. Internal bickering, defections, and allegations of misrule and financial misappropriation further weakened Banerjee's faction. The latest blow came when her Nandigram by-election candidate, Sanchita Pradhan Dey, abruptly withdrew from the contest after reportedly meeting Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari at his office — leaving Mamata without a nominee for the 6 October poll.

In a bid to salvage some presence in the seat, she announced support for Congress candidate Milan Pradhan as part of the INDIA bloc strategy. That too unravelled when Pradhan was subsequently arrested in connection with an old case, stripping the alliance of its Nandigram standard-bearer.

A Symbol Turned on Its Head

Nandigram's political arc mirrors West Bengal's own transformation. The constituency went from being the crucible of Mamata's rise to the stage of her most stinging reversal. Notably, the same Suvendu Adhikari who gave her movement its organisational spine in 2007 has been the instrument of her undoing at every subsequent turn — from the 2021 Assembly result to the 2026 Bhabanipur contest.

With no candidate in Nandigram and her INDIA bloc partner's nominee behind bars, Banerjee heads into the 6 October by-election as a bystander in the constituency that once defined her. How she — and what remains of the TMC — regroup from here will shape Bengal's opposition politics for years to come.