Three recently resigned RS members of TMC join BJP

Three recently resigned RS members of TMC join BJP

Kolkata, July 9 (IANS): Three former Rajya Sabha members of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), all of whom have resigned from the Upper House of the India Parliament last month, on Thursday afternoon, joined Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at the party’s state headquarters at Salt Lake in Salt Lake in the northern outskirts of Kolkata.

BJP’s state president in West Bengal and the party’s Rajya Sabha member, Samik Bhattacharya, welcomed the three former Trinamool Congress Rajya Sabha member namely Sukhendu Sekhar Roy, Sushmita Dev and Prakash Chik Baraik and handed over the party flag to them.

However, Bhattacharya made it clear that allowing Roy, Dev and Baraik to join the BJP should be considered as an exceptional case.

According to him, the exceptional case does not mean that BJP will open its doors for anybody from Trinamool Congress. He also made it clear that the three leaders who joined the saffron camp today had clean track-records without a single allegation of involvement in corrupt activities even when they were associated with the Trinamool Congress

Now speculations are rife in the political circles in the state over the possibility that BJP might renominate the three former Trinamool Congress leaders for the by-elections for the three seats in the Rajya Sabha last month that had been vacated by them only last month. The by-polls for three vacant chairs are scheduled on July 24 and the victory of the BJP candidates from all three is a virtually foregone conclusion now.

However, Bhattacharya neither confirmed nor denied the possibility of nominating Roy, Dev and Baraik in the by-polls “Let the discussions on this continue,” Bhattacharya said in reply to the media queries in the matter.

Roy was the first to resign from the Rajya Sabha on June 8, followed by Sushmita Dev on June 10 and finally Chik Baraik on June 11

After the resignation, Baraik was in praise of Chief Minister Subhendu Adhikari. On the other hand, Dev, who is an Assam-based politician, met Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma in Delhi.

Incidentally, Roy was critical of the Trinamool Congress leadership long before the West Bengal assembly elections were conducted earlier this year. He gradually distanced himself from the party leadership, criticising the Mamata Banerjee-led administration over the ghastly rape and murder of a lady junior doctor of state-run R.G. Kar Medical College & Hospital in Kolkata in August 2024.

Thereafter, Roy was sidelined in the party, and finally he resigned from the Rajya Sabha last month.

As per the current numerical equation in the West Bengal assembly, the BJP nominees are likely to win all three seats. The BJP currently has 208 MLAs in the Assembly. In order to defeat a BJP nominee, an opposition candidate will have to get at least 70 votes.

Though officially, Trinamool Congress has a total of 80 legislators, 60 of them are in the “rebel but majority” faction led by expelled party legislator Ritabrata Banerjee, and the remaining 20 are with the “original but minority” faction, which is continuing with its allegiance towards Mamata Banerjee and her nephew, Abhishek Banerjee

IANS

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Source: IANS