Kolkata, Oct. 1 -- BJP state president Samik Bhattacharya on Thursday said that they are confident of winning both Nandigram and Rejinagar in the upcoming by-election in the state scheduled to be held on October 6.

Bhattacharya said: "TMC has become past and people have put their faith in us. We are confident of winning both the seats in the upcoming bypolls."

While Nandigram is in East Midnapore district, Rejinagar is in Murshidabad district. Both seats are politically significant, though their political backgrounds and dynamics are different. Suvendu Adhikari is the sitting MLA from Nandigram, a key battleground of Mamata Banerjee's land movement, which eventually helped propel her to power in 2011.

In 2021, Adhikari won the Nandigram seat, defeating Banerjee by a little more than 1,900 votes before going on to become the Leader of the Opposition in the state Assembly. Adhikari is confident of retaining the seat for the BJP and breaking previous records.

"The question is not who wins Nandigram because it is for sure that the BJP will win it. The question is who bags the second position as TMC is wiped off from the political landscape," Bhattacharya added.

Rejinagar, on the other hand, is a Muslim-dominated seat and a traditional stronghold of the Congress and later on the Trinamool Congress before Kabir left that party to form his own. He won this seat in this year's elections along with the Bharatpur seat. Rejinagar fell vacant after he chose to retain the other seat. The seat is important because it is likely to witness a keen contest between BJP, Congress, Left and Kabir's party, and the results would decide whether the BJP can capitalise on the division of Muslim votes in the region.

Dilip Ghosh, state Panchayat minister said: "The way the government has worked in the past four months, there is no doubt that the BJP will win by a huge margin. Rest assured, we are winning. Nandigram definitely and Rejinagar too. The people have reposed their faith in us by giving us such a huge mandate and the government is responding to it by taking all the decisions very confidently and effectively."

Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.