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Arjun Singh back in Trinamool Congress, says BJP's graph on a decline
Arjun Singh, the Barrackpore MP, said the BJP's graph is declining and that politics cannot be done while sitting in AC rooms. Abhishek Banerjee said Singh had rejected the divisive forces by joining the TMC.
Arjun Singh, a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) parliamentarian from Bengal's Barrackpore area, on Sunday rejoined the Trinamool Congress in the presence of the party's general secretary Abhishek Banerjee.
He had earlier said he was visiting the Trinamool MP to discuss issues regarding jute. Singh had switched over to the saffron camp from the Mamata Banerjee-led TMC ahead of the Bengal Assembly election in 2019.
Soon after, Abhishek took to Twitter and welcomed back Singh into the party fold and said the latter had rejected the divisive forces in the BJP. “People across the nation are suffering and they need us now more than ever. Let's keep the fight alive,” he added.
Singh later said politics cannot be done while sitting in AC rooms, in an apparent jibe aimed at the state BJP leadership. “(The leadership) has to get down to the ground to do politics. The party's graph is declining.”
When asked about giving his parliamentary post that he currently held as a BJP member, Singh said, “First, the two TMC MPs who joined BJP should resign (from the MP post), then I'll resign.”
Minutes after Singh's latest move was made official, BJP flags were removed from his residence and TMC flags came back in their place.
Earlier in the day, when asked about the visit, the Barrackpore MP had said that while issues related to jute come under the purview of the Central government, some of them are looked after by state officials too, and that he would be discuss the same during the meeting. “I'll be going to have a discussion with them on this matter today,” Singh was quoted as saying by news agency ANI.
A large number of jute factories fall under his constituency and nearby places and is a major issue politically
He further said the BJP has shortcomings in Bengal and Kerala and it is up to the party as a whole to decide on how to tackle the same. “Being an MP, I can't look into them on an individual level… I have kept my opinion in front of BJP chief JP Nadda and he said that he'll think about it,” said Singh, who is also the state BJP unit’s vice-president.
On Friday, he had said he was not being ‘allowed to work properly", despite holding a senior position in the organisation.
However, when asked if he had plans to leave the party, he evaded a direct reply, while adding there is no such thing as "final word" in politics.
"Those who don’t understand anything about the organisation are giving sermons. I have told Nadda Ji everything. Let’s see what happens. The party has given us a chair, but it doesn’t have legs. The party has given us a pen but it doesn’t have ink," he added.
His comment came a day after the Union government announced its decision to withdraw the notification capping jute prices at ₹6,500 per quintal, a demand he and other industry stakeholders had been pressing for in the last few weeks.
