Ex-TMC ministers meet Kakoli, may join NCPI

In what is being termed as a “defection 2.0”, at least three senior TMC leaders, including former heavy-duty ministers, were leaving the Mamata Banerjee faction of the Trinamool Congress to join the Nationalist Citizens Party of India.

According to sources, TMC leader and former high-profile Bengal Minister Dr Shashi Panja engaged in a private meeting with NCPI leader and MP Dr Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar along with another former TMC minister. “Not only Shashi Panja but also another former very powerful minister had come,” a kind of Dr Ghoshdastidar said. Dr Panja is a close relative of former Union Minister Ajit Panja.

The duo met at the clinic of Ghoshdastidar on Sunday evening, sources said. Both are medical practitioners.

Though followers of Shashi Panja denied claims that Dr Panja was planning to join NCPI, the Mamata Banerjee faction of the TMC said that she had not shown up at Banerjee’s Kalighat residence ever since the TMC lost the Bengal Assembly elections on June 4.

Senior TMC leader and MLA of the Mamata Banerjee faction Kunal Ghosh refused to comment on the issue, saying he had not heard of Panja for the past two months. “She has not come after the defeat… when I called up she said that she was abroad and would come after she returns… after that she would not come… so how can I say whom she met or whom did not… I am also not sure about her plans to join any party or not … as I have no information as of now.”

The latest development comes in tandem with reports that three former Trinamool Congress MPs —out of a lot of 20 who had left the party to join the Nationalist Citizens Party of India (NCPI) soon after the fall of Mamata Banerjee Government in Bengal —were gradually distancing themselves from their new outfit and were “keeping close touch” with the pro-Mamata faction of the TMC.

The three NCPI MPs — Abu Taher Khan from Murshidabad, Khalilur Rehman from Jangipur and Yusuf Pathan from Behrampore — come from the same Muslim-majority Murshidabad district and had avoided attending the recent National Democratic Alliance meeting in Delhi. The NCPI, originally with 20 MPs — who defected from the TMC, leaving only 8 with the mother outfit — presently led by breakaway MP Ghoshdastidar, had “on principle” shown their allegiance for the NDA.

“We don’t want to disclose very many things but take it from me… at least 3-5 MPs and about 8-10 MLAs have once again started communicating with the TMC… whether they want to return is not clear but they are in touch… if at all they want to come back it will all depend upon the party chief Mamata Banerjee,” said Kunal Ghosh a senior TMC leader and MLA of the Mamata Banerjee faction.

Post Bengal Assembly elections, the TMC had split into three parts with the original party led by the former Chief Minister getting reduced to the smallest unit.

The second one comprising 20 MPs was led by Ghoshdastidar and the third one was led by Ritabrata Banerjee, the present Opposition Leader in the State Assembly.

Amid the ongoing legal and political battle for the party’s funds worth several hundred crores, Kunal Ghosh said: “These MPs and MLAs who had won their respective elections carrying Mamata Banerjee’s posters … so they should first resign and then contest and then go back to parliament or Assembly… they have all gone to save themselves from ED and CBI.”

Meanwhile, another party MP Sougato Roy rejected speculations about his joining the NCPI following a social media post where he and his party colleague Shatrughna Sinha were seen dining with BJP leader and Union minister JP Nadda.

“I will never join the BJP or NCPI… some people are posting some clippings maybe from the parliament canteen… which is irrelevant,” he said. On a second post that showed him with Home Minister Amit Shah and some other leaders, he reiterated, “Take it in writing from me that I will never join the BJP or NCPI.”