Chief minister Mamata Banerjee admitted on Monday that the largesse showered on the Adhikary family by her had allowed them to keep the East Midnapore district on a tight leash, attempting to distance herself from the family on the penultimate day of campaigning at Nandigram, the only seat she is contesting from.

Mamata narrated the parable of the mouse that was turned into a tiger but could not stay so for long and was forced to become a mouse again to prove her point.

“I feel sad that this boy (Suvendu Adhkary), I made him the minister for irrigation, environment and transport. I made him the chairman of the Haldia Development Authority. His father the chairman of the Digha Development Authority (Sisir Adhikary is also three-time MP from Contai). His brother was the chairman of the Contai Municipality, Contai Co-operative Bank, Midnapore Co-operative Bank. One person ten posts.

“Now they have made so much money, the BJP has caught them. Either join BJP or perish. He will be neither here nor there,” Mamata said while addressing a public meeting at Thakurchak in Nandigram, referring to her former cabinet colleague and the current BJP nominee Suvendu Adhikari.

“I have heard the ITI here is theirs. Trawlers, houses, hotels, petrol pumps everything, they have everything,” Mamata said, while she accused Adhikary of “dirty, nuisance and mischievous politics.”

She also refers to him as “Gaddar” (traitor).

Not just administrative power, Mamata had entrusted the responsibility of the party’s youth wing to Adhikary as well as and made him the party’s observer in key districts like Murshidabad, the home turf of Adhir Chowdhury, the state Congress president and a bitter critic of Mamata. Adhikary had successfully encroached into Chowdhury’s camp to poach some of the closest aides of Chowdhury like the former Kandi legislator Apurba Sarkar.

“She gave a free hand to the Adhikary family because she understood their clout was crucial to keep the support base in the two Midnapores intact. There was no one in the organisation to keep a check on the growth of Tamluk as a separate power centre within the party,” said a senior Trinamul leader who did not want to be named.

In his affidavit to the Election Commission, Adhikary has listed as “nil” with reference to commercial buildings and investments made on land for development and construction. In 2016 when he first contested from Nandigram, Adhikary had declared his assets to be around Rs 62 lakh. In the 2021 affidavit, Adhikary’s assets are valued at Rs 1,05,52,749 crore.

The acrimony between the chief minister and her once-trusted aide from the region has now spilled over to the campaign where Adhikary is the sitting MLA and is seeking re-election on a BJP ticket. Union Home minister Amit Shah is scheduled to hold a roadshow for him on Tuesday.

The 2007 anti-land acquisition movement in Nandigram had propelled Mamata’s career as a politician and brought her to the forefront against the erstwhile Left Front government.

On Sunday, Mamata raked up the events of March 14, 2007 in Nandigram, when 14 villagers were killed in police firing. In her days as the principal Opposition leader in Bengal, Mamata had claimed that CPM had sent its cadres with police. Then chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee had denied sending the police, though the denial was largely seen as a face-saver. The Nandigram movement had sealed the fate of the Left Front government, which was voted out of power in 2011.

While campaigning, Mamata claimed that police could not have entered Nandigram without a green signal from the Adhikarys, though she did not name them. On Monday, Mamata claimed the Adhikarys were hand-in-glove with CPM-backed goons.

“The CPM leader, Naba Samanta, who had committed atrocities on the people of Nandigram, is now a BJP leader and Gaddar is his leader,” she said. “The CPM (Left Front government) filed cases against everyone but not Gaddar. He was not there. He did not lead the movement,” she said.

Filmmaker Kamaleswar Mukherjee, an active votary for the Left-Congress alliance, questioned why Mamata had pointed fingers at then chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee in a social media post.

“The chief minister has said the firing on Nandigram villagers was done by armed men under the orders of a member of her cabinet and undisputed leader. Questions: Why didn’t she stop them that day? Despite being aware of it, why hasn’t she punished them? Why did she call Leftists “mass-murderers”? If she knew everything, why had she held the former chief minister responsible?”

Mamata has claimed that for the April 1 polls, goons have been brought from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh who would be sent to the villages in police uniform to threaten local residents to vote for BJP.

In a letter to the Chief Electoral Officer, West Bengal, the Trinamul Congress has officially requested not to deploy policemen from any of the NDA-ruled states in the country. The party has also alleged that “outsiders” have been given accommodations in hotels, lodges, guest houses, houses of BJP leaders and even rented ones, on Nandakumar High Road and Chandipur, and also in some schools and an election office.