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Blow for Bengal BJP as Lok Sabha MP Arjun Singh returns to TMC after 38 months

May 22, 2022 07:22 PM IST

The TMC uploaded photos of Singh’s joining on social media at 5.45 pm but Banerjee did not appear at the press conference that followed, which was seen as a marked departure from the norm.

Kolkata: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) suffered a blow in Bengal on Sunday when Arjun Singh, its Lok Sabha member from Barrackpore in North 24 Parganas district and a state vice-president, returned to the Trinamool Congress (TMC) after 38 months.

BJP Lok Sabha MP Arjun Singh joins TMC in the presence of party's general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, in Kolkata on Sunday. (ANI PHOTO.)
BJP Lok Sabha MP Arjun Singh joins TMC in the presence of party's general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, in Kolkata on Sunday. (ANI PHOTO.)

TMC national general secretary and chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s nephew Abhishek Banerjee welcomed Singh into the TMC fold at his office on Camac Street in south Kolkata.

The TMC uploaded photos of Singh’s joining on social media at 5.45 pm but Banerjee did not appear at the press conference that followed, which was seen as a marked departure from the norm.

The announcement was made by TMC’s Naihati legislator Partha Bhowmick in the presence of forest minister Jyotipriya Mallick and other legislators from North 24 Parganas.

“I was inducted by Abhishek Banerjee under instructions from Mamata Banerjee. I returned to the home where I belonged. I left because of some misunderstandings. I left the BJP because of the treatment being meted out to Bengal. Our jute industry is suffering because of the Centre,” Singh said at the press conference.

He said his son, Pawan, the sitting BJP legislator from Bhatpara, would have also come to the TMC office but could not make it because he was unwell.

“The chief minister recently wrote to the Centre that Bengal’s jute industry will be destroyed. I took up the issue the moment I got to know of this letter,” he added.

“I must surely resign as MP but I will first urge the two TMC MPs who joined the BJP to resign first,” he said, indirectly referring to BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari’s father, Sisir Adhikari, the MP from Contai in East Midnapore and Sunil Mondal, the MP from East Burdwan. The TMC has appealed to Lok Sabha speaker Om Birla to disqualify them.

Sisir Adhikari was seen at a rally of Union home minister Amit Shah before the 2021 assembly polls, while Mondal formally joined the BJP in December 2020.

“Let them resign first. It will take a minute less than an hour to step down and contest from Barrackpore again,” said Singh.

“The Bengal BJP’s organisation exists only on Facebook not on the ground. Nobody can work there,” said Singh, adding that many BJP leaders are eager to join the TMC but they will be screened first.

Singh’s joining was not smooth, TMC leaders said, because Abhishek Banerjee had to convince several leaders from North 24 Parganas who were opposed to his return.

While Banerjee held a long meeting with the TMC leaders at his Camac Street office, Singh, who drove down from the district at about 2 pm, waited at a star hotel in Alipore, around two kilometres away. He was summoned to Camac Street after 4 pm.

“The countdown to the end as well as a beginning has begun,” he told reporters before leaving for Kolkata. The Kolkata Police tightened security around the hotel and at Camac Street.

Recognised as a heavyweight leader, Singh joined the BJP in March 2019 and defeated TMC’s then sitting Barrackpore MP Dinesh Trivedi that year. The election was marked by violence which continues intermittently in the region.

Sixty-year-old Singh’s tenure in the BJP was marked by repeated violence in Barrackpore and criminal investigations initiated against him by the state police in connection with financial irregularities during Singh’s tenure as a councillor of Bhatpara municipality from 2010 to 2019. He was also a four-time TMC legislator from Bhatpara and served as chairman of the municipality.

Hours before Singh formally joined the TMC, the BJP leadership conceded loss.

“Nobody knows what grievance he has. Had we won the assembly polls last year we would have made him Bengal’s chief minister. Sadly, we are not in that position,” BJP national vice-president Dilip Ghosh sarcastically said.

“How could Singh win the Barrackpore seat and 17 other BJP candidates win the 2019 Lok Sabha polls if our party exists only on social media?” Ghosh quipped in the evening.

Singh started distancing himself from the BJP two months ago, often criticising the leadership in public.

He expressed his dissatisfaction with the Central government in April when he said Bengal’s jute mills, many of which dot North 24 Parganas, are suffering losses because in September 2021 the jute commissioner’s office capped the price of raw jute to 6,500 per quintal. Demanding a lower price, he said if Mamata Banerjee started an agitation on this issue he would join it.

On May 9, Singh met Union textiles minister Piyush Goyal in Delhi and the jute commissioner’s office subsequently issued a notification revoking the earlier order with effect from May 20. The order, however, did not state a new price and Singh upped the ante.

Since Singh was simultaneously criticising the Bengal BJP leadership, the party’s national president, J P Nadda, met him in Delhi on May 16. This meeting made it clear that Singh was about to leave the BJP because while leaving Nadda’s residence he said: “Wait for 15 days and you will see what happens.”

With Singh’s exit, the number of BJP Lok Sabha members in Bengal has come down from 18 to 16.

Former Union minister Babul Supriyo, who won the April 12 Ballygunge assembly by-poll in Kolkata, left the BJP last year after being dropped from the Narendra Modi government. He joined the TMC in September.

The TMC has been eroding the BJP’s base in North 24 Parganas since the assembly polls in 2021 in which the saffron camp suffered losses in the district.

Singh’s brother-in-law Sunil Singh, a former TMC legislator, returned to the ruling party on February 13 this year along with his son, Aditya. The BJP MP’s nephew, Saurav Singh, the former chairman of Bhatpara municipality, followed suit. All three had joined the BJP when Arjun Singh left the ruling party.

On Sunday afternoon, Singh’s followers pulled down BJP flags from his residence and the party’s office. His profile photos on social media pages were also changed.

Jyotipriya Mallick, the TMC’s heavyweight leader from North 24 Parganas, is considered one of Arjun Singh’s old rivals.

Mallick, who was inducted into the TMC’s new national working committee in February, said, “If our party’s top leadership wants Arjun Singh to join, we will accept it.”

In May 2021, the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the West Bengal police served summons to Singh in connection with an alleged economic offence. The first information report (FIR) in this case was lodged on July 28, 2020. The charges were brought under several sections of the Indian Penal Code and Section 13 of the Prevention of Corruption Act. Singh alleged that he had been made a victim of political vendetta.

In September last year the Union home ministry asked the National Investigation Agency (NIA) to probe a bomb attack outside Singh’s home at Bhatpara. At least three crude bombs were hurled by miscreants. The MP was not at home and no one was injured. The Centre asked the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) to provide security for Singh in view of these incidents.

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