Haldia | Declaring that the battle for Nandigram has become "easier" than it was in 2021, BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari on Monday filed his nomination papers from the constituency he has represented since 2016 and then quickly shifted the spotlight to a second, bigger battlefield- Bhabanipur, where he is set to take on West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.

If Nandigram was the theatre that produced Bengal's most dramatic political upset five years ago, Bhabanipur now threatens to become the stage for its sequel. Adhikari had defeated Banerjee in Nandigram by 1,956 votes in 2021.

Adhikari, the leader of the opposition, filed his papers before the sub-divisional officer in Haldia after a roadshow through parts of Purba Medinipur, accompanied by Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan and senior BJP leader Dilip Ghosh.

"Compared to 2021, Nandigram is easier this time," Adhikari said after filing his papers.

"Dharmendraji was telling me after seeing the roadshow that 'is baar teen guna hoga' (the victory margin would be three times). People want to press the EVM button immediately. It feels as if the election is tomorrow. People do not want one more moment of misrule," he said.

Adhikari claimed that the arithmetic which had made Nandigram a difficult contest in 2021 had now changed in BJP's favour.

"In 2021, by the numbers, Nandigram was a tough seat. At that time, there were around 64,000 Muslim votes, and Mamata Banerjee had misled them by equating the Citizenship Amendment Act with the NRC. Now people have understood. Muslims, too, understand they will get security and good governance under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Hindus have become even more united. So Nandigram is easier now," he said.

The remarks underline how sharply polarised Nandigram has become over the past decade, from the cradle of Banerjee's anti-land acquisition movement to perhaps the BJP's most symbolically charged constituency in the state.

For Banerjee, Nandigram was once the soil from which her political rise to Writers' Buildings began.

It was here, in 2007, that the protests against the then Left Front government's proposed land acquisition for a chemical hub turned into one of the defining political movements in Bengal's recent history.

The firing on protesters in Nandigram on March 14, 2007, became a turning point that irreversibly damaged the Left's image and helped propel Banerjee to power four years later.

Adhikari himself was one of the principal faces of that agitation. Then, a TMC MLA from Tamluk and the son of veteran strongman Sisir Adhikari, he emerged from the movement as one of the most powerful leaders in coastal Bengal. He later became the MP from Tamluk in 2009.

For years later, Nandigram and the Adhikari family became inseparable in Bengal politics.

Suvendu first won the Nandigram assembly seat in 2016 as a TMC candidate.

In 2021, after dramatically switching to the BJP months before the election, he turned the constituency into the epicentre of the state polls by challenging Banerjee there.

Banerjee abandoned her safe Bhabanipur seat to take on her former lieutenant in the constituency that had once defined her own political journey. The campaign was bitter, personal and relentless. When the results came, Adhikari defeated her by 1,956 votes after a day of confusion, recounts and competing claims.

Banerjee later returned to the Assembly through a bypoll from Bhabanipur, her long-time stronghold in south Kolkata.

Five years later, the rivalry is returning, only with the geography reversed.

This time Banerjee has returned to Bhabanipur, while the BJP has fielded Adhikari against her there, transforming the constituency into what is likely to be the most high-profile seat in the 2026 election.

Adhikari on Monday suggested that Bhabanipur, too, was now within the BJP's grasp.

"After the SIR, Bhabanipur has already become BJP's seat," he claimed, referring to the special intensive revision of electoral rolls.

He alleged that Banerjee had previously won from Bhabanipur because of "infiltrators and fake voters", and claimed that after the revision of the rolls, such a result would no longer be possible.

"I will not be the first BJP winner from Bhabanipur. In 2014, when Modi first became prime minister, BJP had led in the Bhabanipur assembly segment during the Lok Sabha election," he said.

The BJP leader said he would continue campaigning in Nandigram and across the state till April 23, the date of the first phase of polling, after which he would shift entirely to Kolkata.

"From the morning of April 24, I will stay in Bhabanipur. On April 29, after defeating Mamata Banerjee and sealing the strong room, I will leave Bhabanipur. Then we will meet again on May 4," he said.

For the TMC, defeating Adhikari, especially in Bhabanipur, is now as much about political prestige as electoral arithmetic.

Yet Nandigram still matters. More than any other constituency in Bengal, it carries layers of political memory.

It is where the Left lost its moral authority, where Mamata Banerjee built her image as the defender of farmers and the dispossessed, where the Adhikari family rose to dominance, and where the BJP first succeeded in converting anti-TMC anger into an electoral victory over the chief minister herself.

And if Adhikari is to be believed, the seat that once defined Mamata Banerjee's rise may now be preparing to endorse, for a second straight election, the man who became her fiercest political adversary.