TMC’s Nandigram bypoll pick a schoolteacher, panchayat worker
Times of India | 15 September 2026A resident of Boyal-2 gram panchayat in Nandigram, De Pradhan served on the Nandigram Block II panchayat samiti from 2013 to 2023, holding the women and child welfare portfolio from 2013 to 2018 and the education portfolio from 2018 to 2023.
On Monday, De Pradhan said, “Mamata Banerjee nominated me as the candidate from Trinamool yesterday. I welcome it and have accepted it with humility as a party worker. Any election is difficult. It is not just Nandigram; elections are difficult everywhere. The senior leadership will decide, and the party workers will also stand by me.”
She began her teaching career at Narsinghapur Board Primary School in Nandigram Block II and is currently posted at North Boyal Primary School. She now resides in Tamluk.
For some time now, she has been embroiled in a legal complication. In 2022, Calcutta High Court ordered the termination of services of 269 primary teachers — De Pradhan among them — over alleged irregularities in appointments through a second merit list in the 2014 TET recruitment drive.
The affected teachers appealed to the Supreme Court, which granted an interim stay, allowing them to continue working pending further proceedings.
Trinamool spokesperson Kunal Ghosh called the HC order a “legal technicality” that cast no aspersion on her work. “She can pull off an upset. BJP may use police, CBI and NIA to intimidate party workers, but how will they stop mothers and daughters from voting?” he said.
The Nandigram seat fell vacant after CM Suvendu Adhikari resigned as MLA following his 2026 election victory over Trinamool’s Pabitra Kar.
