BJP leaders have issued statements, suggesting that Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury is welcome to join their party, should he finally leave the Congress.

Chowdhury, a known Mamata Banerjee baiter, was the leader of the Congress in the 17th Lok Sabha and till recently, the party’s Bengal chief.

Since Chowdhury expressed his displeasure with the Congress high command on Tuesday over the treatment accorded to him as the outgoing Pradesh Congress Committee President, leaders of the BJP, and even sections within the Trinamul Congress, have been putting out feelers to him.

But on Thursday, some in the BJP started going on record.

“The Congress has deceived Adhir Chowdhury. He is the right player but in the wrong party. One cannot stay in the Congress and oppose Trinamul. That he cannot attack Mamata Banerjee while in the Congress has been made abundantly clear by the likes of (Mallikarjun) Kharge saheb,” said the BJP’s chief spokesperson for Bengal, Samik Bhattacharya.

Chowdhury’s resistance to any understanding between the Congress and Mamata in Bengal is believed to have forced Trinamool to go solo in the recent general election. The Congress and the Left contested the polls as allies but the tie-up did not yield favourable results for either.

Asked if the BJP was the right party for Chowdhury, Bhattacharya said the people of Bengal had already set the binary.

“If Trinamool is defeated, it will be defeated by the BJP, none other. So if Adhir babu thinks Trinamool’s defeat is the foremost need for Bengal’s future, then there is no other alternative,” said the Rajya Sabha member.

Since the electoral debacle of the Congress in Bengal, questions have been raised about Chowdhury’s political future. An analysis of the poll data suggests that a united fight by the INDIA bloc in Bengal would have cost the BJP at least six of the 12 Lok Sabha seats it had won.

Chowdhury was defeated by Trinamul’s Yusuf Pathan in Baharampur. The Congress veteran had won consecutively from Baharampur since 1999. The Congress high command confirmed that a search was on to pick a new chief of the party in Bengal.

The BJP’s Bishnupur MP Saumitra Khan (formerly a colleague of Chowdhury in the Congress) said his understanding of the man suggests he would not quit the Grand Old Party.

“He has been loyal to the Congress and avowedly anti-Mamata even while she was in the party, since 1996…. Additionally, given that his area of influence is primarily the Murshidabad-Malda-Birbhum belt, he might want to consider launching his party,” said Khan, implying that Chowdhury might do himself a disservice by joining the BJP as the three districts with a decisive share of the minority population in the electorate.

“Perhaps our senior leadership would reach out to him, and it’s his decision in the end…. But he could fare better with a new party,” he added.

A former Chowdhury protégé, Apurba David Sarkar — now a key Trinamool leader in Murshidabad who marshalled Pathan’s campaign in Baharampur — had said on Wednesday that the TMC could welcome the former MP. But seniors in Mamata’s party had dismissed the idea, and Kunal Ghosh said Trinamul believed Chowdhury was awaiting expulsion by the Congress so that he could go to the BJP.

On Thursday, Trinamool’s leader in the Lok Sabha Sudip Bandyopadhyay said Chowdhury’s departure from the Congress would widen the path for a better partnership between the two INDIA constituents in Bengal.

“That did not happen solely on account of Adhir’s obstacles. That we realised from the very start,” he added.

Chowdhury’s trusted aide, the Congress’s chief spokesperson for Bengal Soumya Aich Roy, has said other parties need not lose sleep over the former MP’s future. “The people of Bengal know and trust Adhir Chowdhury and his intentions as a leader of the Congress, he doesn’t need the BJP’s certificates,” said Aich Roy.

“Chowdhury loves Mahatma Gandhi. He is not going to sign up for the party that worships Nathuram Godse,” he added.