War of words ensued between the Trinamool Congress and the BJP after the former accused the saffron outfit of ‘horse-trading’ in Madhya Pradesh even as senior Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia quit his party to join the BJP along with an impressive bunch of party legislators.
Hours after Scindia’s somersault TMC and BJP traded fire as senior Trinamool MP Sudip Bandopadhyay said that the latest development in MP would go down in the history as yet another shameful chapter in Indian democracy.
Not ruling out “horse-trading” in that State causing Scindia to join the BJP, Bandopadhyay said “our Trinamool Congress is of the firm opinion that the party that has been voted out of power should not try to stage a backdoor entry and the party that has been voted to power by the people should not be deprived from discharging its responsibility of running the Government for five years.”
Citing how the BJP had been pulling down Governments or indulging in horse-trading in States like Karnataka, Manipur and other states where “they are forming Government with parties that are in second or third position,” Bandopadhyay said “in such circumstances people cannot be faulted for suspecting horse-trading.”
“This incident” (of Scindia joining the BJP) would go down as yet “another shameful chapter in the history of Indian democracy,” he said inviting strong condemnation from the State BJP which said the TMC should first search its own basket of wrongs before blaming the others.
“It is a shame that a party which is itself guilty of horse-trading in Bengal is blaming the others,” State BJP president Dilip Ghosh said.
“There are numerous instances to show how the TMC either arm-twisted or purchased dozens of Congress and Left leaders to join their ranks. Everyone knows how Congress and the Left lost several of their MLAs who joined the TMC without even being expelled from the Assembly,” he said.
Meanwhile in an unrelated development the Trinamool Congress kept its decision reserved on whether to field a fifth candidate in the Rajya Sabha elections.
For the five vacant positions the party has nominated four former MPs --- Dinesh Trivedi, Mausam Benazir Noor, Subroto Bakshi and Arpita Ghosh. For the fifth vacant place the Left has decided to field former Kolkata Mayor and senior advocate Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya with the backing of the Congress. Jointly the Congress and the Left has 70 MLAs in Bengal House.
“We can’t say as to whether we will field the fifth candidate,” TMC general secretary Partho Chatterjee said adding “talks are on and let us see whether we can field a fifth candidate or support anyone from some other party or not.”
Bhattacharya a former Advocate General of Tripura Assembly had successfully appeared for senior Congress leader Abdul Mannan the main petitioner in the Sharada chit fund case and the Narada pay off case to obtain a Supreme Court order directing CBI investigation into these cases. The TMC Government had opposed CBI investigation.