Kolkata: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) suffered a blow in Bengal on Sunday when party MP Arjun Singh returned to the Trinamool Congress (TMC) after 38 months.
The Lok Sabha member from Barrackpore in North 24 Parganas district and vice-president of BJP’s Bengal state committee joined the party in presence of TMC’s National General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee at his Camac Street office in Kolkata.
After joining the TMC, Singh said: “The way Trinamool Congress is working on the development of Bengal is worth appreciating. I am from the jute mill area and the people there have been suffering because of the Centre’s unjust policies. BJP is limited to Facebook and other social mediums. It is not possible to do politics only on Facebook. Working on the ground is important in Bengal and the BJP is losing out on that as their leaders are sitting in air-conditioned rooms.”
He said his son, Pawan, the sitting BJP legislator from Bhatpara, would have also come to the TMC office but could not make it because he was unwell.
Recognized as a heavyweight leader, Singh joined the BJP in March 2019 and defeated TMC’s then sitting Barrackpore MP Dinesh Trivedi that year.
The election was marked by violence which continues intermittently in the region.
Hours before Singh formally joined the TMC, the BJP leadership conceded loss.
“Nobody knows what grievance he has. Had we won the assembly polls last year we would have made him Bengal’s chief minister. Sadly, we are not in that position,” BJP national vice-president Dilip Ghosh sarcastically said.