West Bengal Assembly polls | A polarised Nandigram will cast its vote on April 1

Chants, ‘gaddar’, outsider barbs smeared the high decibel fight by political heavyweights

After three months of a relentless, high-pitch campaign by both West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee of the Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) candidate Suvendu Adhikari, who switched to the party months before the election, a polarised Nandigram will cast its vote on April 1. During the campaign, slogans veered around Nandigram with Ms. Banerjee rhyming it with “sangram” (struggle) and Mr. Adhikari choosing “Jai Shri Ram”. Another pitch of the campaign revolved around the TMC labelling Mr. Adhikari as a “gaddar” (traitor) and “Mir Jafar” and the BJP leader propping himself up as a “bhoomiputra” (son of the soil). The campaign began with Ms. Banerjee announcing in January that she would contest from Nandigram, which had seen a fierce anti-land acquisition movement in 2007-08 during the Left Front regime. The BJP fielded Mr. Adhikari, whose family has nurtured the Purba Medinipur constituency as a TMC member. “We have not seen such a big campaign ever,” said a group of women waiting for Home Minister Amit Shah’s road show on the last day of campaigning. Two of the women, wearing saris in BJP colours, one from the Left parties and another from TMC, had switched over to the BJP in January after Mr. Adhikari joined the party. Echoing the sentiment among a section of the people, Shibani Das said, “Didi is spending days here at Nandigram now but she couldn’t spare hours for us earlier. It is not as if she has not done work as Chief Minister.”