Following the resignation of three Trinamool Congress MLAs in the last 48 hours, a Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM) legislator representing Haldia in Purbi Midnapore district resigned on Friday and is most likely to join the Bharatiya Janata Party when union home minister Amit Shah makes a two-day trip to West Bengal on December 19 and 20.
Immediately after Tapasi Mondal dropped enough hint that she is on her way out her party CPM expelled her.
Though both Suvendu Adhikari and Tapasi originally hail from rival parties—the Trinamool Congress and the CPM—one thing is common, that is they are both from the same district.
Two days back Suvendu had resigned from his party after he had quit the Mamata Banerjee cabinet last month. This was followed by the resignation of Jitendra Tiwari and Shilbhadra Dutta. They represent Pandaveswar and Barrackpore Assembly seats respectively. A minority leader of TMC Kabir-ul-Islam also quit the party on Friday.
A few days back the TMC MLA from South Cooch Behar, Mihir Goswami, had joined the BJP in New Delhi.
Dutta was upset over the alleged interference in the party’s affairs by poll strategist Prashant Kishor.
According to reports Prashant Kishor, who is working for the TMC, is not happy with the performance of many of the legislators and wants their names to be dropped.
Party insiders are of the view that except Suvendu the party chief Mamata Banerjee is not very much bothered about the exit of others. She did try to get Suvendu back to the party and a meeting was held between him and the party MP Saugata Roy and Prashant Kishor. Though apparently the talks were termed successful, but Suvendu later resigned.
His departure from the party may affect the poll prospect in Purbi Midnapore district as he was considered among the architects of the Nandigram movement in 2007.
