Another MLA from CPM, 50 Bengal councillors shift loyalty to saffron party
Three West Bengal MLAs — one from Left and two from TMC, including BJP leader Mukul Roy’s son Subhranshu Roy — and over 50 councillors joined the BJP on Tuesday in an affirmation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s comments at a Lok Sabha poll rally that about 40 Trinamool Congress MLAs are in contact with the BJP.
With this the saffron party gave an unambiguous message that it is not to rest at its recent victory of 18 Lok Sabha seats in the State and will go all out to bring in more strength to its fold from Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s party.
BJP general secretary and Bengal incharge Kailash Vijayvargiya claimed the BJP’s ranks are to grow with TMC leaders. Asked whether it is not horse trading, he said “it is exchange of hearts”.
“Three MLAs and 50-60 councillors are joining BJP today. This is the first phase. Such joining will continue in future also,” said Vijayvargiya. He said Mamata’s partymen are not happy with her authoritarian style of working.
TMC MLAs Subhranshu Roy, Tushar Kanti Bhattacharjee and CPM MLA Debendra Nath Roy joined the BJP at its headquarters here. While joining they chanted “Jai Shri Ram” and “Bharat Maata ki Jai”.
Subhrangshu Roy was suspended by the TMC for his “anti-party” activities after the general election results were announced. “Like seven-phase of LS poll, the movement from TMC to BJP would be in phases,” quipped Mukul Roy.
Roy is seen to be instrumental in engineering the defection of TMC leaders to the BJP and, political watchers believe, he is one of the key architects of the party’s best ever show in West Bengal, where TMC president Mamata has been in power since 2011.
While the BJP won 18 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats, the TMC bagged 22 seats in the Lok Sabha polls.
Meanwhile, senior TMC leaders and Ministers Firhad Hakim and Jyotipriya Mullick said the “defection” was not a major setback and that most of the party had faith in Mamata who would “provide an effective leadership against BJP’s cultural invasion of Bengal like the way she led us against the Marxist misrule.”
With hordes of councillors quitting the TMC in West Bengal, four municipalities drifted the BJP’s way. A fifth in Katwa looked like moving away with rebellion already noticed in this municipality.
“Like the rats quit the ship in the face of storm and sink in turn, there are some people who are leaving the ship. But these people are cowards and have no ideology. They are doing this just out of fear. They have no faith themselves. But finally these people will sink and Mamata will emerge triumphant,” Hakim maintained.
His party colleague and another Minister Jyotipriya Mullick, who is also the party’s charge de affairs of North 24 Parganas adjoining Kolkata from where the TMC has lost two out of five Lok Sabha seats, said, “The leaders joined the BJP not because they wanted to do it from within. They only did it at the point of bayonet. Their heart is with us and they are physically with the BJP.”
The TMC will soon bounce back under the leadership of Mamata “like we did after the colossal defeat in 2004 — when we were left with just one seat — but winning 20 seats in 2009. Just wait and see what we will do in 2020 and 2021.”