Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress lost five MLAs in 24 hours, but managed to save when one of them, Jitendra Tiwari, said he was back in the camp. Friday’s major exits were the MLAs Shilbhadra Dutta and Banasree Maiti, as the party bleeds the rebels looking to cross over to the BJP four months ahead of the elections. Jitendra Tiwari and Suvendu Adhikari left on Thursday.
Later, Jitendra Tiwari called his resignation a “mistake” After meeting with a senior leader and Minister of State, he said to reporters, “I never said anything about Didi (Mamata Banerjee) or joining BJP”
There was a strong objection raised by Asansol MP Babul Supriyo just after Jitender Tiwari resigned on Thursday.
The leader of the BJP, who has had a lot of run-in with Mr Tiwari in the past, said he joined the party. Mr Supriyo was backed by Bengal BJP Leader Dilip Ghosh, who said that working together could prove difficult, given the hostility between the supporters of both parties.
Trinamool shrugged off the exits of the MLAs that it described as liabilities. After a meeting at Mamata Banerjee’s residence on Friday night, attended by her nephew, Abhishek Banerjee, MP, and poll strategist, Prashant Kishor, Trinamool sources said that the Chief Minister had taken a stern line against the defectors, so he said. T
TMC got its first bad news of the day as Shilbhadra Dutta, the Barrackpore lawmaker, resigned. Since then, Mr Dutta has stated that he will join the BJP today in the presence of senior BJP leader and Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who will tour Bengal this weekend.
Dutta had openly criticised the increasing presence of IPAC, Prashant Kishor’s outfit, in running the Trinamool, and had refused to meet IPAC workers who had recently visited him at his home.
“I think that I am unfit in the party in the present scenario,” Mr Dutta told reporters after emailing his resignation to the Chief Minister.
Many other resignations are taking place at lower tiers of the party.