Over 20 TMC elected leaders have jumped ship

‘Number of TMC MLAs who will join the BJP by the time polls are announced in Bengal, will easily cross 30’.

 

New Delhi: At least 18 MLAs have left the All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) willingly or have been expelled from the party since 2019, with most of them joining the BJP.

These 18 do not include MLAs like Laxmi Ratan Shukla (Howrah Uttar) and Domjur MLA Rajib Banerjee who have resigned from the Mamata Banerjee Cabinet, but are still a part of the TMC.

Kolkata-based sources said that apart from Shukla and Banerjee, at least two TMC MLAs, apart from Baishali Damliya (MLA from Bally), who was expelled from the party earlier this week, will be joining the BJP in the presence of Union Home minister Amit Shah when he does a rally in Howrah on 31 January.

The other two MLAs, who are likely to join the BJP on 31 January, are Prabir Ghoshal who is a MLA from Uttarpara and Dakshin Kanthi MLA Dibyendu Adhikari, who is brother of former Nandigram MLA Suvendu Adhikari.

If this happens, the total number of TMC MLAs who would have joined the BJP will reach 23.

It is pertinent to mention that senior BJP leaders who are in-charge of West Bengal, including Mukul Roy, who himself was a part of the TMC, and Kaishash Vijaywargiya, have been claiming for the last couple of years that more than 50 TMC MLAs wanted to join the BJP. According to Kolkata-based BJP sources, the number of TMC MLAs who will join the BJP, by the time the elections are announced in West Bengal,  will “easily cross” 30, as at least 10-12 of them are still in “various stages” of talks with the local BJP leadership.

Kolkata-based BJP party functionaries said that there was a “very strong” possibility that   Sisir Adhikari, who is a Lok Sabha MP from Kanthi and father of Suvendu Adhikari, and Soumendu Adhikari, Chairman of Contai Municipality and brother of Suvendu Adhikari, too, will join the BJP on 31 January

Since 2019, three Lok Sabha MPs, including Saumitra Khan, MP from Bishnupur, Anupam Hazra, MP from Bolpur, and Sunil Mondal MP from Bardhaman Purba, have quit the TMC and joined the BJP. In the 2016 Assembly elections, the TMC had won on 211 seats in the House of 294 seats.

The 18 MLAs who have quit/expelled from the TMC in the last few months are: 1. Mihir Goswami, Cooch Behar; 2. Bansari Maity, Kanthi Uttar; 3. Saikat Panja, Purulia; 4. Silbhadra Datta, Barrackpore; 5. Biswajit Kundu, Kalna; 6. Dipali Biswas, Malda’s Gajole; 7. Sukra Munda, Nagrakata; 9. Arindam Bhattacharya, Shantipur; 10. Baishali Dalmiya, Bally; 11. Suvendu Adhikari, Nandigram.

The TMC MLAs who left the party earlier are: 12.   Sabysachi Dutta, Bidhannagar; 13. Arjun Singh MLA, Barrackpore; 14. Biswajit Das MLA, Bongaon; 15. Dulal Bar, MLA, Bagdah; 16. Manirul Islam, Birbhum; 17. Shubrangshu Roy, Bijpur, son of Mukul Roy; 18. Sovan Chatterjee, MLA and Chairman of Kolkata and Municipal Corporation.