Kolkata: The ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) in MC was rocked Monday by a fresh bout of defections to BJP. Five of its sitting MLAs quit the Trinamool Congress after being denied tickets. The party 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 TMC’s 23 members changed sides during the day.
Sonali Guha, four-time TMC MLA and a close associate of Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee for two decades joined the disgruntled leaders to quit the party and join the BJP. So did 80-year-old Rabindra Bhattacharya, who was a prominent face of the Singur anti-farmland acquisition movement. Both the leaders had been denied tickets by TMC for the coming polls.
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.
Another four-time legislator, 85-year-old Jatu Lahiri, and former footballer Dipendu Biswas, a first-time MLA, also switched sides after their names did not feature in the TMC’s candidate list released March 5.
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.
TMC MLA from Sankrail in Howrah district, Sital Sardar joined the saffron party later in the day after being replaced due to ‘ill health’. Sarala Murmu, the TMC lawmaker from Habibpur in Malda district who was ommitted from the party’s list of candidate, too switched sides. There was speculation earlier that she might join the BJP as she did not get the desired seat.
“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, 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.
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.
