The Congress on Monday received a huge blow in Bengal with party bigwigs like former PCC president Manas Bhunia and former ClP leader Md Sohrab joining the ruling Trinamool Congress along with four of their senior colleagues.
Joining the ruling outfit Bhunia, who was at loggerheads with current PCC president Adhir Chowdhury and Opposition leader Abdul Mannan, said, “Bidhan Bhavan (the PCC headquarters) is a ghost house befitting its users. No Congressman worth one’s salt will continue with that party compromising basic ideology for what we stood for the past so many decades.”
Bhunia is an MlA from Sabang in West Midnapore and the present Public Accounts Committee chairman. He said, “Trinamool Congress is the real Congress and what you know as Congress is nothing but a signboard,” adding, from “today my heart, soul, conscience and mind are with the Trinamool Congress which is being run ably by Mamata Banerjee.”
On whether he would quit the MlA’s post, he said, “I will do whatever my party tells me to do. The decision lies with my leadership.” Bhunia has been with the Congress for the past 46 years.
Giving his reactions, Md Sohrab, a former Murshidabad MlA, said how opposed he was to the “so-called alliance between the Congress and the CPI(M).” He said, “Ideologically, we are different. While the Congress is a party that believes in non-violence preached by Mahatma Gandhi, the CPI(M) is a party that relies on violence. Again the CPI(M) advocates class struggle while the Congress stands for class collaboration. So how can the two parties form an alliance.”
Sohrab, who broke his 56-year association with the Congress, said he had taken time before quitting his “party run by dictators.”
Among other senior leaders who quit the Congress were Kanak Debnath, Manoj Pandey, Sujay Ghosh.
Earlier, two MlAs one each from the Congress and the left had joined the Trinamool.
The Congress had been worst hit on account of defection from its rank to the Trinamool post elections when Banerjee returned to power with thumping majority.
The Congress has lost more than a dozen civic boards in the past couple of months with most elected representatives joining the Trinamool making the Congress and the left to allege “defection at gun point.”