West Bengal Chief Minister and TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee is likely to contest bypoll from the Bhabanipur assembly constituency as sitting MLA Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay resigned from the seat on Friday.
Chattopadhyay formally submitted his resignation to West Bengal Legislative Assembly Speaker Biman Bandyopadhyay in his Assembly chamber in presence of party leader and state minister Partha Chatterjee and others.
West Bengal | TMC’s Sovandeb Chatterjee resigns as MLA from Bhawanipore
“I have enquired from him if he has resigned voluntarily and without coercion. I am satisfied, and I have accepted his resignation,” says West Bengal Assembly Speaker Biman Banerjee pic.twitter.com/qJtScYHUnO
— ANI (@ANI) May 21, 2021
“The chief minister has to get elected as a legislator within six months. I had contested this year’s election from Mamata Banerjee’s constituency. Today, I am resigning from this seat so that she gets elected from Bhabanipur,” Chattopadhyay said after tendering his resignation.
“I personally and the party wants her to contest from Bhabanipur. She will now decide the future course of my political career,” he added.
Despite the astounding victory of TMC in the recently concluded Assembly polls, Banerjee lost elections to her former protégé-turned-rival Suvendu Adhikari in Nandigram.
Banerjee needs to get re-elected to the assembly within six months to hold on to the chief minister’s chair.
During election results, while it was initially reported that Banerjee had won by a margin of 1,200 votes, the returning officer subsequently announced Adhikari as winner by 1,956 votes. Banerjee had vowed to move court over the Nandigram result.
Meanwhile, as per sources, Chattopadhyay can be fielded from a different constituency as elections to two seats in the Murshidabad district have been postponed after two candidates died due to Covid-19. Party insiders also claimed that Chattopadhyay can be made a Rajya Sabha MP.
