“I am nobody. My brother and my father are everything here. And then there is the blessings of our leader Mamata Banerjee,” says 33-year-old Dibyendu Adhikary, Trinamool Congress candidate from Contai (South) Assembly constituency and the latest member of Adhikary family to join politics.

Dibyendu’s father Sisir Adhikary is Trinamool Congress MP and Union minister of state for rural development. His elder brother Suvendu Adhikary won the Lok Sabha elections from Tamluk earlier this year and had to quit the Contai (South) Assembly seat.

Interestingly, Sisir and Suvendu were Trinamool’s pointsmen in Nandigram which catapulted Mamata Banerjee back to the centrestage of Bengal politics.

In the November 7 by-elections when 10 Assembly seats will be up for grabs, all eyes will be fixed on Contai (South) seat in East Midnapore. “Winning the seat is not our concern as we are sure of it. Our challenge is to see how big will be the victory margin for my son,” said Sisir Adhikary. “I and my son Suvendu spearheaded the Nandigram agitation and exposed CPM’s terror to the world and the people of Bengal,” he added.

In the last Assembly elections, Suvendu won by a margin of 8,900 votes in Contai (South), which has 1.76 lakh voters.

Dibyendu, who graduated in political science from P K College in Contai, is not new to politics. At first, he was the general secretary of Chhatra Parishad (Congress students’ wing) in his college and later joined Trinamool’s students’ wing where too became the general secretary.

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