KOLKATA: Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP, Dr. Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, resigned from all organisational portfolios of the party today.
This comes three days after quitting the post of the Barasat district Trinamool Congress.
The veteran MP wrote a letter to Subrata Bakshi, party’s Bengal president, urging him to accept her resignation letter.
She expressed deep resentment over issues, including scams such as Saradha, Naradha and cash-for jobs for teachers, rape and murder of a post-graduate trainee doctor at the state-run R G Kar Medical College Hospital in Kolkata during the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress government's tenure.
Ghosh Dastider’s resignation from organisational portfolios, including the national president of the Trinamool Congress’s women’s wing, has intensified the possibility of her joining the BJP.
Her decision comes a day after she attended Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari's administrative review meeting in Kalyani of Nadia district despite her party allegedly instructing her not to participate in the event.
She, however, continues as the MP of the Barasat Lok Sabha constituency in West Bengal.
“My conscience is deeply stirred. Scams related to the state public distribution system (PDS), teachers’ recruitment and other administrative and financial irregularities have generated disappointments and mistrust among common people,” she wrote in the letter to Bakshi.
“The alleged attempt to supress evidence in connection with the R G Kar Hospital incident has stunned the entire society,” she wrote adding, “There is no justification with holding the portfolio of the national president of the women’s wing at a time when it’s not possible to refrain an uneducated, rough MP of the party from doing indecent behaviour to women members in the parliament.”
She has also launched attack on the Trinamool Congress leadership on I-PAC, a political consultancy agency engaged by the party in Bengal, issue.
The MP had recently been vocal about her disappointment with sections of the party leadership.
On Sunday, Dastidar announced her resignation as the president of the TMC's Barasat organisational district unit. The party accepted her resignation the following day and appointed Tapas Chatterjee as the new chief.
After Tuesday's administrative review meeting in Kalyani, Suvendu had claimed that the Trinamool Congress MP had told him that she had "finally got freedom", a remark that added to the political buzz around her presence at the event.
Ghosh Dastidar, and six Trinamool Congress MLAs from North 24-Parganas on Tuesday attended an administrative review meeting headed by the CM.
“Today she delivered a speech, cooperated in the discussion, and while leaving, she shook hands and said, ‘It was a very good meeting. I have attended many meetings before, but I was never even allowed to speak,’” Suvendu had told reporters after the administrative meeting on Tuesday.
Earlier, she had expressed her discontent after the party’s drubbing in the recently concluded Assembly elections, followed by her removal from the post of chief whip of the Trinamool’s parliamentary party.
“Known since 1976, started walking together in 1984. I was rewarded for four decades of loyalty,” she wrote on her social media handle on May 15 after her removal from the parliamentary post.