In a major setback to West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee’s party, two sitting parliamentarians of Trinamool Congress (TMC), Dibyendu Adhikari and Arjun Singh, joined Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday. The development has come nearly a day before the Election Commission of India (ECI)’s announcement of the schedule of Lok Sabha elections 2024.
Dibyendu Adhikari is the brother of senior BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari, who joined the saffron party in 2021 and was considered a ‘giant killer’ as he defeated West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee in Nandigram constituency during assembly polls in 2021.
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After joining the BJP, Dibyendu Adhikari expressed happiness and praised the party for reaching out to the victims of the Sandeshkhali incident first. Attacking West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in the incident, he said, “People had a lot of expectations with Bengal CM as she too is a woman. In Bengal, women don’t have the respect that they should have. There is no rule of law there.”
“Our job would be to work as a BJP worker and work on the ground to take the party forward and get 400 plus seats for PM Modi,” he added.
Former TMC leader, Arjun Singh is not joining the BJP for the first. He was a part of the saffron party between 2019 and 2022. He joined Mamata Banerjee’s party in 2022 even as he remained a BJP MP on Parliament record.
His jump from the TMC has come after he was dropped from the TMC’s list of candidates for the Lok Sabha polls. “After I became the MP from BJP, the way post-poll political violence happened in West Bengal, our area was the worst hit. I was tolerating atrocities on myself, but to save the workers, I had to keep some distance from the party (BJP) for some days,” Arjun Singh said after joining the party.
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Published: 15 Mar 2024, 05:21 PM IST
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