Protests over TMC turncoats getting BJP tickets in around a dozen assembly seats across Hooghly, Howrah and South 24 Pargana districts have concerned the saffron party’s top leadership.
Desperate in its bid to wrest power from West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, the BJP opened its doors to Trinamool Congress turncoats hoping for some electoral benefits but the saffron party is now grappling with ill-effects of the move.
The poaching of TMC leaders was done to make up for BJP’s lack of organization and home-grown leaders in the eastern state. The move also aimed at denting Mamata’s credibility and projecting the saffron party as a strong contender for power.
However, protests over TMC turncoats getting BJP tickets in around a dozen assembly seats across Hooghly, Howrah and South 24 Pargana districts, after the second list of 63 candidates was out, has concerned the saffron party’s top leadership.
While some state BJP leaders attributed the protests to opportunistic TMC elements getting into the saffron party fold without proper checks and played down poaching by describing it as a necessary evil, the news of widespread discontent reached New Delhi prompting union home minister Amit Shah to review the situation with senior party leaders in the national capital and later in Kolkata.
A course correction may be in the offing but significant damage has already been done, feel many poll observers.
The BJP went into the high-stakes 2021 assembly polls riding on the 18 out of the 42 Lok Sabha seats the saffron party won in West Bengal in 2019.
The saffron party launched a high-pitched campaign last year marked by the visit of Amit Shah while the Bihar assembly polls were still on.
As a follow up, the BJP engineered a series of defections involving senior TMC leaders and ministers to demoralize Mamata Banerjee, who is eyeing a third term as chief minister.
The first major defection from the TMC camp was Mamata’s close aide Suvendu Adhikari who is contesting from Nandigram. Many others who followed suit have also been given a BJP ticket including Rajib Banerjee from Domjur, Mohit Ghati from Panchla, Santanu Bapuli from Raidighi besides former Congressman Sumit Ranjan Karar from Udaynarayanpur.
In Hooghly, the BJP office was ransacked as Madhya Pradesh minister Vishwas Sarang faced protests over Singur candidate Rabindranath Bhattacharya, a former TMC leader.
Workers were also upset over BJP leader Deepanjan Guha getting a ticket from Chandanagore seat as he is a resident of Chinsura while word went around that TMC rebel Debabrata Biswas was being given a ticket from Saptagram.
In another instance, former TMC minister Sovan Chatterjee, who joined BJP two years ago, quit after actor Payel Sarkar was given ticket from Behala Purba assembly seat just days after joining the saffron party.
Also, the BJP office was ransacked in Chinsura, where the party fielded sitting MP Locket Chatterjee, a former actor.
After TMC Lok Sabha member Mahua Moitra attacked nominated Rajya Sabha member Swapan Dasgupta for getting a BJP assembly ticket from Tarakeshwar, saying it was against norms, the leader quickly tendered his resignation from the upper house of Parliament.
Among others fielded by the BJP include union minister Babul Supriyo from Tollygunge and former chief economic adviser Ashok Lahiri from Alipurduar.
In 2019, former TMC youth leader Nishit Parmanik was fielded from Cooch Behar after he joined BJP but the leader won the poll justifying the move. Parmanik is now contesting assembly polls from Dinhata.
While it is common place for a few political leaders to switch sides ahead of any elections, the large number of defections from either side this time have surprised the poll observers and forced many to compare politics in the eastern state with the ‘ayaram, gayaram’ trend popular in the north.
The move showed desperation among the BJP but for the TMC the defections reflected discontent within the ruling party. The TMC argues that turncoats in its camp are not new entrants and had joined the ruling party a few years ago.
Hurt over the BJP’s move to poach party leaders, Mamata has now targeted some of them and has decided to probe the irregularities in recruitment of assistants when Rajib Banerjee was forest minister in her government.
In another case, when the ruling party targeted former Kalna MLA Biswajit Kundu, he acknowledged that along with his wife and sister-in-law, over 60 TMC workers had been beneficiaries of alleged irregularities in the recruitment of primary teachers in 2014.
In his defense, Kundu blamed his former political masters for the faulty appointments.
Interestingly, after Suvendu Adhikari joined BJP, a video of a sting operation showing the former TMC leader accepting bribes was removed from the saffron party’s YouTube channel in December last.
While the BJP has been attacking the TMC over charges of corruption, the opposition, including the TMC and the Congress-Left alliance have been targeting the saffron party ignoring the charges against turncoats, specifically the induction of former Mamata aide Mukul Roy, who too had been targeted over alleged corruption and Suvendu.
Recently, both Roy and BJP’s Barrackpore MP Arjun Singh faced protests from angry party workers while entering the party office over tickets for TMC turncoats.
Locked in a bitter power tussle with the BJP, the TMC has questioned the lack of a chief ministerial face among the saffron party which is claiming to win 200/294 assembly seats and pointed out that there were several claimants for the top executive post in the state against the undisputed Mamata Banerjee from the ruling party.
Sadly, the Trinamool Congress too could not remain untouched with the plague of poaching.
The ruling party in West Bengal has given tickets to around 16 imports from the Congress and Left parties in areas like Malda, North Dinajpur, Murshidabad, Siliguri and Nadia while it also dropped several sitting MLAs, whose supporters took to streets against the move.
In fact, both the sides have tried to brush off the phenomenon of accommodating leaders from rival parties at the eleventh hour. While the saffron party managers have dubbed it a necessary evil, the ruling party said some people would always be unhappy as ticket allotment gets competitive.
Whether the gamble to poach TMC leaders and induct several popular faces like actor Mithun Chakravarty (who is not contesting) pays off for the BJP will be clear on May 2 when the results are out.
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