Days after Mamata Banerjee expressed her willingness to play ball with the Congress on condition of reciprocation and days ahead of the anti-BJP Opposition meet in Patna, the Trinamool Congress on Monday drew the Congress blood by getting its lone MLA in the State legislature Byron Biswas to join the Bengal ruling outfit.
Left-backed Congress candidate, Biswas had won the Sagardighi Assembly by-elections three months ago causing a big flutter in the State politics ahead of the next year’s general elections. Sagardighi is in Muslim dominated Murshidabad district.
Biswas who joined the TMC in the presence of its national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee however said that he was attracted by Mamata Banerjee’s developmental works and that he was not being able to work while in the Congress.
“I was unable to work in the Congress … and there is no point being an MLA if you cannot work … so I joined the TMC where I will get ample scope to work under the leadership of Mamata Banerjee whose welfare schemes have inspired me,†Biswas said.
Coming against the backdrop of the multi-crore recruitment scam the Sagardighi elections had been interpreted as the beginning of the end of the Trinamool Congress rule and the rise of a new experiment in the form of Congress-Left camaraderie in Bengal.
Both the Congress and the Left drew a blank in the 2021 Assembly elections which was apparently conducted in an unprecedentedly polarized atmosphere.
The Congress immediately reacted to Biswas’ joining the TMC saying the people of Sagardighi would remember the “deceit.†Pradesh Congress president Adhir Chowdhury said, “they (TMC) may have purchased or coerced one MLA into joining their party … but they will not be able to purchase the people of Sagardighi … this dishonest defection will only strengthen their result and the TMC will get a befitting reply in the next elections.â€
The TMC which had allegedly engineered a large number of defections in the Bengal Congress over the past several years was actually playing with snake Chowdhury said adding “the snake-charmers finally die of snake bite.â€
Referring to Chowdhury’s attack, Abhishek Banerjee who is also the nephew of the Chief Minister said, the Congress’ failure to hold back its MLA was not the TMC’s fault adding his party never engineered defections.
