KOLKATA: Barely 72 hours after the Trinamool Congress announced the full list of candidates fielded in the upcoming Assembly elections, one of the contestants, in a bizarre move, joined the BJP on Monday along with the ruling party’s four other incumbent MLAs, who were denied tickets.
The defection took place at the party’s Hastings election office in south Kolkata.
Sarala Murmu was in the list announced by TMC supremo on Friday last week and was selected for the Habibpur Assembly constituency, reserved for a scheduled tribe candidate, in north Bengal’s Malda district.
Sensing her defeat, Sarala decided to jump ship and join the BJP, sources in the TMC said.
“Most of the TMC functionaries in the constituency where I was fielded have already joined the BJP. In the TMC, I was given a post but no work to do,” said Sarala.
Noticing Sarala’s suspicious move on Sunday night, the TMC issued a statement announcing Pradip Baskey as the party’s new candidate and cited her health condition as the reason.
“We anticipated Sarala’s move because she did not want to contest from Habibpur as she thought BJP’s victory is sure there. She wanted to contest from another seat which is Old Malda but the party refused,” said a TMC leader.
Among others, four time MLA from Satgachia and once Mamata’s trusted colleague Sonali Guha, Singur’s octogenarian legislator Rabindranath Bhattacharya, Shibpur MLA Jatu Lahiri and footballer-turned lawmaker from Basirhat (Dakshin) Dipendu Biswas also joined the saffron camp.
A number of ruling party’s functionaries from Malda zilla parishad and South Dum Dum municipality, too, shifted sides and came under the umbrella of the BJP.
Bengali actress Tanushree Chakraborty also joined the BJP on Monday.
Bhattacharya and Lahiri were denied tickets as the party decided not to field octogenarian candidates in the upcoming poll and both of them come under the bracket of the age restriction.
Trinamool also lost control of Malda zilla parishad.
This was TMC's second largest single-day exodus after political heavyweight Suvendu Adhikari along with 35 TMC leaders, including five MLAs and an MP, switched over to BJP December last year.
The BJP took control of the 38-member Malda Zilla Parishad after its 23 members changed sides during the day.
With Bhattacharya joining the saffron camp, TMC has lost both its prominent faces of the Singur and Nandigram anti-land acquisition movement to the saffron camp.
The movement had catapulted TMC to power ending 34 years of Left Front rule in the state.
Suvendu Adhikari will now take on Banerjee, his former mentor at Nandigram.
BJP state president Dilip Ghosh handed the party flags to them during the day in the presence of Adhikari and the party's national vice-president Mukul Roy.
"The TMC is no longer a party of the masses. It has become a family-run party. Honest people have no place in the TMC," Bhattacharya said.
Guha, who had broken down immediately after getting news of her omission from the list of candidates of TMC released on Friday, said her former party had tried to speak to her.
"But I was no longer interested. I had given more than a hundred per cent to TMC. Didi (Banerjee) and others know that very well. I will now devote myself equally to the BJP in whichever way they use me," she said.
Murmu, who is known to be a Adhikari loyalist, hit out at TMC saying it does not have an atmosphere to work for the masses.
Actor Tanusree Chakraborty also joined the BJP.
Reacting to Monday's exodus, senior TMC leader Sougata Roy said it showed that the defecting TMC leaders do not have any moral values and are only hungry for posts.
"It's a good riddance. Just because these leaders were not given tickets, they quit TMC," Roy said.
An elated BJP said the "beginning of the end of TMC has already begun" and the party will disintegrate soon.
"It is only a matter of time before TMC disintegrates. Those who want to fight against TMC should join us," Ghosh said.
He, however, said it is not necessary that those who have joined BJP will be given tickets for the coming assembly polls.
Since the 2019 Lok Sabha polls when the BJP bagged 18 seats, just four less than the ruling TMC and emerged as its main challenger in Bengal, 24 MLAs of the Trinamool Congress, two TMC MP, three belonging to the Congress and the CPI(M) each and one from CPI has crossed over to the saffron camp.
However, except for the former state cabinet ministers - Suvendu Adhikari, Rajib Banerjee and Rajya Sabha MP Dinesh Trivedi none of them resigned as MLAs or MP.
Election for 294-seat Bengal Assembly is poised to be a stiff contest between the TMC and the BJP.
The election will be held in eight phases, beginning with polling for 30 seats on March 27.
Votes will be counted on May 2.
(With PTI Inputs)