Suvendu Adhikari to vacate Nandigram, retain Bhabanipur seat

West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari announced on Wednesday that he will retain the Bhabanipur Assembly seat and give up Nandigram.

He won both the Bhabanipur and Nandigram seats in the recently concluded assembly polls and took oath in the state Assembly as an MLA from Bhabanipur on Wednesday.

"Someone else will be elected as MLA from Nandigram (in a bypoll). But I will not let the people there feel my absence during the next five years.

"I will fulfil all development promises I made to the people of Nandigram alongside the rest of the state," Adhikari told reporters at the Assembly premises.

Referring to the 2009-2016 tenure of Phiroja Bibi as a TMC MLA from Nandigram when Adhikari was a frontline leader of Mamata Banerjee's party, he said, "I had provided all support to Phiroja Bibi, the mother of a martyr in the 2008 Nandigram police firing, although I wasn't officially the MLA from that seat."

"I will play a similar role this time as well," he said.

Adhikari defeated TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee in her Bhabanipur bastion in the recently concluded Assembly polls by a margin of 15,105 in a see-saw battle while defending his own keep of Nandigram by 9,665 votes over his nearest rival, Pabitra Kar of the Trinamool Congress.

Responding to a question on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's austerity advice and call for curbing the use of petrol and diesel in the wake of the crisis triggered by the West Asia conflict, Adhikari said he issued instructions to cut down the number of vehicles in his cavalcade.

"The prime minister is our guide and mentor. We will follow the path shown by him. Swachh Bharat was one such nationalist call that came from the PM. It was an excellent decision to cut down on the number of convoy vehicles.

"I have already told the state DGP to convey the director (security) that all unnecessary vehicles must be removed from the CM's cavalcade and only those which are absolutely essential are to be retained," Adhikari said.