Suvendu Adhikari’s resignation on Friday as minister and Haldia Development Authority chairman has cast a shadow of uncertainty over development projects in East Midnapore’s Nandigram.

Adhikari is known as the man behind Mamata Banerjee’s Nandigram movement that had propelled Trinamul’s rise in Bengal politics.

With Adhikari’s departure from the roles of transport, irrigation and water resource minister, residents of Nandigram fear development would take a back seat.

Nandigram is a one-crop place owing to high salinity in water. “A surface water-drawing project to improve farming prospects is yet to be taken up. An 8km canal was to be dug up but now that project comes under a cloud,” said a source, adding Adhikari’s efforts had earlier brought an irrigation canal to the area.

The Haldia Development Authority, which Adhikari chaired, wanted to convert 25 rural roads in Nandigram to concrete and install LED lights. No one knows if that would happen. A Trinamul source said during Adhikari’s tenure as minister, 100 rural roads in Nandigram were metalled.

The other projects that become uncertain are the transport department’s plan to build a new central depot in Nandigram and a Nandigram-Khejuri government bus route.

There’s more. “Many projects started by then railway minister Mamata Banerjee in 2009 were carried forward by Suvendu in 2011. Now we can safely say we will never see them complete,” said a TMC leader.

A resident said Mamata as Union railway minister between 2009 and 2011 had laid the groundwork for the Nandigram railway line and station, but both are incomplete.

A shipyard in Jellingham on the banks of the Hooghly inaugurated and abandoned during the Left era, was to be revived, but nothing concrete emerged.

Some Nandigram residents are feeling betrayed. Hoimoboti Halder, 75, who had been shot at in the stomach on March 14, 2007, by the police during the anti-land-acquisition protests, said: “We saw both Mamata and Suvendu’s verve in the agitations, where is all of that now?”

She is not the only one. Congress leader Milan Pradhan said he was upset by Adhikari’s decision to quit as minister. “We may have had our political differences but we had once fought for a brighter future for Nandigram. Nandigram will suffer in the absence of someone like Suvendu.”