Trinamul Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee has kept faith on her two former ministers from Malda, Krishnendu Narayan Choudhury and Sabitri Mitra. Miss Banerjee today once again nominated them as the party’s election candidate from English Bazaar and Manikchak constituencies, respectively.

The announcements also ended speculations among the people on whether it was Mr Choudhury or the present MLA from English Bazaar, Nihar Ranjan Ghosh, who would be chosen for the English Bazaar seat. However, Mr Ghosh is going to contest the polls on a TMC ticket from Chanchal constituency. Apart from this, five new names have been included in the list of candidates for the

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district–Sarala Murmu, the former Malda Zilla Parishad sabhadhipati from Habibpur; Chandana Sarkar, present sahasabhadhipati of the MZP from Baishnabnagar; Abdul Ghani, a retired judge from Sujapur; Basanti Barman from Gazole and Ujjwal Choudhury from Old Malda.

Again, a total of five women have been nominated from the district, with the fifth one being Sabina Yeasmin from Mothabari. According to sources, fire crackers went up immediately after the name of Krishnendu Narayan Choudhury was declared as the candidate in his party office at Kalitala in English Bazaar.

His supporters there claimed that Mr Choudhury was the lone candidate here to take up the challenge from the BJP and that he had been rightly chosen by Miss Banerjee over any other name. Among others, Tajmul Hossain, a former MLA, has been nominated from Harishchandrapur, Abdur Rahim Bakshi, the former MLA from Malatipur, and Samar Mukherjee, present MLA, from Ratua.

“I was elected MLA thrice and was also a minister. Thanks to Didi for nominating me from English Bazaar. I want to gift this constituency to her by defeating the BJP and the Congress-CPIM alliance,” Mr Choudhury said.

Mr Ghosh on the other hand said, “Didi has done whatever she thought was right. Chanchal is not new to me. The TMC will win there undoubtedly.” All the other candidates also thanked Miss Banerjee for her decision to choose them. “We all are now committed to gifting all the 12 seats of the district to Mamata Banerjee and we are ready for this,” said Mausam Noor, the district president of the TMC.