The BJP on Friday said the party would oppose any move to hold Assembly bypolls at a time when the Covid-19 pandemic was raging across the country in an apparent move to prevent Mamata Banerjee from becoming an MLA within six months of her swearing-in as the chief minister.

Article 164(4) of the Constitution mandates that in order to continue as the chief minister, Mamata, who lost the Assembly election in Nandigram to Suvendu Adhikari of the BJP, needs to be elected to the Assembly within six months of the swearing-in on May 5.

State BJP general secretary Sayantan Basu said: “She has to go. Mamata Banerjee will no longer be the CM. Let her choose someone else from her party who has won the polls. There is no need for bypolls in the state now. We will oppose it.”

Mamata had said on Wednesday that the Election Commission should conduct the bypolls in seven Assembly segments at the earliest and at once.

To remain as the chief minister, Basu said, Mamata was willing to risk the lives of the people of Bengal by demanding the bypolls at a time when the second wave of the novel coronavirus was raging across the country and a third wave threatened to arrive any moment.

He was speaking on the sidelines of a protest rally his party organised to mark the anniversary of the Emergency imposed by then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1975. The rally was supposed to start from BJP’s Bengal headquarters in 6, Muralidhar Sen Lane in Calcutta, but police stopped it citing pandemic restrictions.

“The police are not allowing us to hold a rally with merely 50 people, citing restrictions imposed because of the pandemic. If such is the case, we will not allow elections amidst the pandemic either. She (Mamata) cannot risk the lives of the people for the sake of being in power,” he added.

There had been deliberations within the BJP on what the party’s stand regarding the bypolls should be. Until Friday, it was being said unofficially that the BJP leadership planned to oppose the idea of holding the bypolls now to create pressure on Mamata.

A section within the BJP feels Basu has only demonstrated the party’s frustration over the appalling defeat in Bengal and its desperation to disrupt the smooth functioning of a democratically elected government.

The concern over risking people’s lives by holding bypolls amidst the pandemic comes from the general secretary of a party whose top-rung leaders were accused of addressing rallies during the campaign for the Assembly polls when the second wave had hit the nation.

“It is a strategy of the party to oppose holding of bypolls to pile pressure on Mamata. If you remember, Suvendu has repeatedly attacked Mamata Banerjee by calling her a non-MLA CM. The party wants to keep it that way. At least create as many hindrances in the way to her election as possible,” a BJP leader said on Friday.

“But many of us feel it will disrupt the functioning of the government and trigger a negative reaction from the people,” the leader added.