Two days after announcing the name of candidates for all 42 Lok Sabha seats, Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee today battled dissent from ticket hopefuls whose hopes were dashed.
Leading the pack was Barrackpore MP and strongman Arjun Singh who dropped hints about crossing over to the BJP. Apart from Singh, two other sitting MPs, Humayun Kabir and Sunil Mandal, made restive noises while actress Sayantika Banerjee, another aspiring leader, rued that she had “wasted three years of her life working for the party”. Singh was among the seven incumbent MPs whose names did not feature in the Trinamool list.
Arjun Singh was denied renomination and in his place, the name of his bete noire and State Minister Partha Bhowmick was announced.
On Monday, while speaking to a news agency on CAA, going against the party line, he praised the implementation of the law saying it was a historic move by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Singh had quit the Trinamool Congress in 2019 and had contested the 2019 Lok Sabha elections on a BJP ticket. However, he rejoined the Trinamool Congress in 2022. His son is a BJP MLA.
The Barrackpore Lok Sabha constituency has a strong presence of Hindi-speaking voters, many of whom work in the jute mills in the area. Singh, a heavyweight leader from the area, had been elected to the West Bengal Assembly four times on Trinamool Congress candidate. Before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, he joined the BJP and defeated Dinesh Trivedi in a closely-fought contest but later joined the Trinamool again.’
Talking to reporters, Singh said: “When I joined the TMC, I was told that I would get a ticket from Barrackpore. I am not a seasonal fruit. I am someone who works 12 months round-the-clock. This is a clear breach of trust. There was some mistake from my side in defecting to the Trinamool. Although the party assured me that I’d give a ticket for the Barrackpore Lok Sabha seat, I was finally denied it,” Singh said.
Senior BJP members have sounded caution about re-inducting Singh into the party. Former BJP leader Tathagata Roy called Arjun Singh a mafioso of the industrial belt of North 24-Parganas district. “He got a ticket by courtesy of KDSA (Kailash Vijayvargiya, Dilip Ghosh, Shiv Prakash, Arvind Menon) gang, won and promptly went back to TMC. This time TMC refused him a ticket. Now he will lobby BJP. My entreaty: do not touch him with a ten-foot pole,” Roy posted on X.
Singh’s followers started hitting the streets from Sunday evening, demanding that the Trinamool Congress reconsider the list.
Arjun Singh also spurned Trinamool Congress’ efforts to pacify him by offering another seat or a ministerial post in the Government.
Leader of the
The BJP’s Leader of the Opposition in the State Assembly, Suvendu Adhikari said that Singh defected to the Trinamool Congress due to fear of false police cases foisted upon him, and that he had advised Singh against joining the Trinamool.