COOCHBEHAR: An attempt by TMC ministers on Friday to meet disgruntled party MLA Mihir Goswami, who connected with a BJP MP and trigerred speculation, went in vain as he was "not present" at his home here at the time.
BJP MP Nisith Pramanik had on Thursday met Goswami at the latter's residence here.
The saffron party declined to comment saying it is an internal matter of the TMC.
The meeting between the BJP MP and TMC MLA months before the state Assembly polls had fuelled speculation.
Senior TMC leader and North Bengal Development Minister Rabindranath Ghosh along with his cabinet colleague Binoy Krishna Burman went to Goswami's residence on Friday evening to meet him, but he was nowhere to be found.
"We had gone to meet Mihir. He is an old soldier of TMC. But we couldn't meet him. His family members said he was not at home and they were not aware of his present location. We hope to get in touch with Mihir very soon," Ghosh told reporters.
Asked whether TMC is apprehensive that Goswami might jump the ship, Ghosh said "Mihir Goswami is a loyal soldier of the TMC and he will remain in the party," The Coochbehar district BJP leadership declined to comment on the matter but lauded Goswami as "a good person and a good leaderg".
"It is an internal matter of the TMC and we don't want to comment on it," Coochbehar BJP district president Malati Rava said.
Pramanik and Goswami had said on Thursday that they had met to exchange Vijaya Dashami greetings in keeping with the Bengali traditions.
Goswami, a two-time MLA from Coochbehar South assembly constituency, is presently in a strained relationship with the TMC after he resigned from all party posts accusing poll strategist Prashant Kishor's I-PAC of running it.
"A political party is run by politicians and not by a bunch of contractors who come and dictate terms to politicians," he had said earlier this month.
After BJP's spectacular performance in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls when it won 18 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats, ten MLAs eight from the ruling TMC and one each from Congress and the CPI(M) had switched over to the saffron camp.
Once a stronghold of TMC, Coochbehar district had witnessed a change in ground level political equations after BJP snatched the Coochbehar parliamentary seat from Mamata Banerjee's party in the last Lok Sabha polls.