Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has fielded advocate Priyanka Tibrewal against West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo Mamata Banerjee from Bhabanipur Assembly seat. CM Banerjee needs to win in order to hold on to her office. As per the Election Commission's schedule, polling will take place on September 30 while results will be announced on October 4.
Priyanka, 40, a lawyer by profession, is known to be behind the BJP's victory in the post-poll violence PIL against the West Bengal government. The Calcutta High Court recently ordered a CBI probe into crimes such as rape and murder during post-poll violence in the state.
Priyanka has held various roles in the BJP. She has been the State Officer Bearer for the party. An English Honors graduate from the University of Delhi and law from the University of Calcutta, Priyanka embarked on her journey as an advocate in the High Court of Calcutta and the Supreme Court of India. She also holds a Master of Business Administration from Assumption University, Thailand.
Priyanka was also the legal adviser of former Union Minister Babul Supriyo. Inspired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, she joined the BJP in August 2014. In 2015, she had contested the Kolkata Municipal Council elections from ward number 58 (Entally). She, however, lost to TMC's Swapan Sammadar.
Priyanka was elevated to the vice president post of Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) in West Bengal in August last year. In the Assembly elections held earlier this year, she entered the fray from Entally but lost to TMC’s Swarna Kamal by a margin of over 58,000 votes.
Meanwhile, the Left Front has announced that CPI(M) leader Srijib Biswas will be its candidate for the bypoll to Bhabanipur.
The bypoll will be held on September 30 along with the elections to Samserganj and Jangipur seats in Murshidabad district where polling could not be held during the eight-phase assembly election held earlier this year.
Banerjee is a resident of Bhabanipur and has contested from the seat in the past two state assembly elections since 2011. Banerjee, who led her party to a massive electoral triumph for a third successive term, is required to win a seat in the state assembly by November 5 in conformity with the constitutional provisions to continue as Chief Minister. The Constitution allows a non-member of a state legislature or Parliament to continue in a ministerial position for six months.
After her defeat in Nandigram, Sovandeb Chattopadhyay, state Cabinet minister and TMC MLA from Bhabanipur, vacated the seat to facilitate her election from there. Banerjee had entered the Assembly after winning the by-poll in the Bhabanipur seat months after her party stormed to power by ousting the 34-year-old Left Front regime in 2011. She is a six-term MP from the South Kolkata Lok Sabha seat, which has the Bhabanipur seat as one of its segments.
Meanwhile, BJP has also declared the names of its star campaigners for the upcoming bypolls on Friday led by- Dilip Ghosh, Suvendu Adhikari, Amitava Chakraborty, Rahul Sinha, Swapan Dasgupta, Anirban Ganguly, Debasree Choudhary, Babul Supriyo, Subhas Sarkar, John Barla, Samik Bhattacharya, Roopa Ganguly, Agnimitra Paul, Shantanu Thakur, Locket Chatterjee, Shahnawaj Hussain, Smriti Irani, Dinesh Trivedi, Manoj Tiwari and Hardeep Singh Puri.
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