Raigunj Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA Krishna Kalyani joined the Trinamool Congress on Wednesday. He is the fifth BJP MLA in Bengal to join the Trinamool after the Assembly elections earlier this year.
He is the former Uttar Dinajpur president of the Trinamool who had joined the BJP ahead of the Assembly polls 2021, and was fielded by the BJP from the Raigunj Assembly seat. The Uttar Dinajpur BJP has been going through internal turmoil, with Kalyani allegedly having differences with former Central government MOS Debashree Chowdhury.
In Kolkata, Kalyani today joined Trinamool in presence of senior leader Partha Chatterjee. Krishna Kalyani later said: “No self-respecting individual can work freely in the BJP.” He said he was also upset about the continuous price rise of fuel, and the Centre “not doing enough” to control it.
Meanwhile, the state BJP chief Sukanta Majumdar said that Kalyani should explain how he had suddenly “woken up” to the policies of Trinamool chief and Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee. Majumdar said: “He will get a befitting reply from the people of Raigunj in future.”
Earlier, BJP’s Krishnagar Uttar MLA Mukul Roy, Bishnupur MLA Tanmay Ghosh, Bagda MLA Biswajit Das, Kaliagunj MLA Soumen Roy had joined the Trinamool. Also, Asansol MP Babul Supriyo has joined Bengal’s ruling party.
The MLAs are yet to resign from the Assembly, though Supriyo has resigned as MP. The Trinamool had won 213 seats in the elections in April-May this year, and later won Samsergunj, Jangipur seats in addition in the byelections (Bhawanipore, which also went to bypolls had been won by the Trinamool in any case). The BJP had won 77 seats, and Dinhata MLA Nishith Pramanik and Santipur MLA Jagannath Sarkar later resigned from their MLA seats, and these will go to bypolls later this month. The tally had thus come down to 75, and with five MLAs switching over to the Trinamool, the BJP now has 70 MLAs in the Assembly.
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