Amit Shah had given Suvendu Adhikari a clear instruction: go into Mamata Banerjee’s home turf and defeat her. Whether he succeeds will be known on May 4. But on poll day, Adhikari did what his mentor asked of him — he fought, hard and visibly, across every corner of Bhabanipur.
It would be his second contest against his former commander. Five years ago, in Nandigram, he beat her by 1,956 votes. This time, Shah parachuted him into Bhabanipur — in addition to Nandigram — with a blunter brief: “Mamata ke ghar mein ghuskar harao, defeat Mamata in her lair.”
A source said Adhikari had initially wanted to contest only from Nandigram, but the instruction from Shah left little room for negotiation.
Shah kept tabs throughout the day, calling Adhikari in the morning to check on the progress of polling in Bhabanipur and across Bengal. At that point, Adhikari was at Nizam Palace, one of his three war rooms in the constituency. He was told that Mamata had been moving through the area near Chakraberia Road North in Ward No. 70, accompanied by 50 to 60 people. He left immediately — his car flanked by central forces, trailed by around 30 media vehicles. By the time he arrived, Mamata had stepped into a five-storey building and did not emerge while he was there. She left shortly after he did.
“She can visit booths as a candidate,” Adhikari told reporters. “But she can’t roam around with 50 people. She is not the chief minister today.” He predicted she would lose Ward No. 70 by 8,000 votes.
The rest of the morning passed without incident as Adhikari moved from booth to booth, ward to ward, checking in at camp offices and monitoring turnout. Then, around 1pm, near Joy Hind Bhavanin Kalighat’s Ward No. 73 — barely 500 metres from Mamata’s residence — the day turned sharp.
As his car passed through the area, a group of around 50 to 60 Trinamool Congress workers began shouting slogans such as Joy Bangla and hurled allegations, including calling him a thief. Adhikari waited. BJP workers with him responded with Jai Shri Ram chants. After about 10 minutes, with the provocation continuing, Adhikari, standing on the footboard of his SUV, called a police officer. Central forces and Kolkata Police arrived shortly after. Then Adhikari stepped out of his vehicle and chased the TMC workers down the lane — all the way towards Mamata’s home.
“I waited 15 minutes and did not react,” he said afterwards. “But as it continued, I chased them away till they fled and disappeared.”
Just before the confrontation, in a quieter moment at the same TMC camp, he had stopped to greet a group of elderly women workers, folding his hands and asking them to let people vote in peace.
He faced similar resistance later in the evening in Ekbalpur, another part of the constituency, but held back this time. Near Jadubabu’s Bazar, he paused at a TMC camp at the request of some of the women there and accepted a cold drink from senior TMC workers. “Competition will be over after the election,” a BJP leader with him said.
By evening, Adhikari was projecting a win by 30,000 votes, claiming leads in seven of Bhabanipur’s eight wards. Turnout figures lent his confidence some weight — by 5pm, 85.51 per cent of voters in Bhabanipur had cast their ballots, with the final figure likely to cross 92 per cent.
Residents said the constituency had not seen a fight like this in years. “Earlier it was only Didi,” said Abha Singh, a voter in Ward 70 who spotted Adhikari outside a polling booth, though she stopped short of predicting a winner.
A BJP national leader monitoring the Bengal polls put it this way: Mamata, in past elections, would come out only to vote. This time, she was out early and moving through the constituency for hours. “Do you not think,” he asked, “that she is under pressure?”
