Mamata Banerjee, West Bengal Chief Minister, is back in her bastion Bhabanipur for a by-election she needs to win to continue in her post. Challenging her will be Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) Priyanka Tibrewal. Banerjee is set to file her nomination papers on Friday for September 30 polls.

The by-election comes months after Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress trounced the BJP in a keenly-fought West Bengal assembly elections. As her party romped home, 66-year-old Banerjee fell short, losing to turncoat leader Suvendu Adhikari in Nandigram. Mamata Banerjee, who took oath as Chief Minister on May 6, needs to get elected to the legislative assembly within six months. Making way for the CM to contest is sitting Trinamool MLA Sovandeb Chattopadhyay, who resigned some time back. 

The BJP pick Tibrewal is a lawyer by profession and has been a state office-bearer of the party. She was instrumental in taking several cases of post-poll violence to Kolkata High Court. In 2015, she contested the Kolkata Municipal Council elections from ward number 58 as a BJP candidate but lost to Trinamool’s Swapan Sammadar.

Tibrewal’s entry into the BJP was facilitated by Babul Supriyo. She joined the party in 2014 and has been assigned several important tasks since. In August 2020, she was made the vice president of Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) in the state.

Her assembly poll debut was in 2021, when she contested from Entally but lost to Trinamool’s Swarna Kamal Saha by a margin of 58,257 votes.

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Before her candidature from Bhabanipur was announced, Tibrewal told News18, “If my party fields me from Bhabanipur against Mamata Banerjee, I will give my best and I am hopeful that people will support me in this battle of justice vs injustice…”. 

She expressed optimism that she would win as the fight was against the post-poll violence and “suffering of the people in Bengal.”