Sagardighi MLA Bayron Biswas joined the Trinamul Congress on Monday, almost three months after he had won a bypoll on a Congress ticket with the support of the Left Front.
“Since taking oath as a legislator, Biswas has been in touch with me.... Keeping Mamata Banerjee’s developmental politics in mind, he has joined us to strengthen our hands in the fight against the BJP,” said Trinamul national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, who inducted the 40-year-old MLA into the ruling party on the sidelines of the Ghatal leg of his ongoing mass outreach event, Trinamuley Nabo Jowar.
“We are confident that Biswas will work selflessly for the people of Sagardighi under the able guidance of Mamata Banerjee. He will raise his voice against the discriminatory politics of the BJP,” added Abhishek.
During the Sagardighi byelection poll campaign, the Diamond Harbour MP had accused Biswas of being a BJP agent on account of his alleged proximity to the leader of the Opposition, Suvendu Adhikari.
Biswas’s desertion pushed the number of non-Trinamul, non-BJP members in the 294-seat Bengal Assembly back to one. Barring those from Trinamul and the BJP, the only member in the House is the ISF's Bhangar MLA Nawsad Siddique.
As Biswas was the lone MLA of the Congress, the anti-defection law is unlikely to apply in his case.
Trinamul effectively has 222 members in the House now, while the BJP has 70. One seat is vacant on account of minister Sadhan Pande’s demise. The majority mark is 148.
In the Sagardighi bypoll necessitated by Trinamul MLA and minister Subrata Saha’s demise, Congress candidate Biswas, backed by the Left, had won by a margin of 22,986 votes. He defeated Trinamul’s Debasish Banerjee.
The constituency in Murshidabad district has over 65 per cent Muslim population.
“I was always with Trinamul, I went to the Congress after being denied candidature. The Congress had no role in my victory, it was on account of the people’s love for me. I will prove it again, in the future…. I needed to do this in order to properly work for the development of the masses,” said Biswas, whose campaign had been based mainly on caustic criticism of Mamata and her party.
“The Congress leadership, under Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury here, seems more bent on attacking Mamata Banerjee than keeping the BJP out,” he added.
Berhampur MP Chowdhury, who is also the leader of the Congress legislature party in the Lok Sabha, publicly issued a defiant statement on Biswas's defection, mounting a scathing offensive on Mamata and vowing her downfall. But sources in the Congress admitted that Biswas's desertion was a body blow to the hopes of the party's turnaround in Bengal.
“After the Biswas victory, Sagardighi had become a sentiment for all those in Bengal opposed to both the BJP and Trinamul.... Many were practically moved to tears today. He backstabbed us and seriously dented our credibility as an anti-Trinamul, anti-BJP force in Bengal,” said a Congress leader in Murshidabad.
Although Trinamul chairperson Mamata had in public dismissed the impact of the Congress's win in Sagardighi, in private, she was worried about the minority support base of her party.
Four days after Trinamul's defeat, the chief ministerhad set up a five-member committee of Muslim ministers led by Siddiqullah Chowdhury to assess the minoritysupport.
The report, which she fully endorsed, basically blamed widely-known issues such as factional feuds in Trinamul, discontent over some lapses in the distribution of benefits of welfare schemes and the general dislike of the Trinamul candidate for the defeat.
“Our chairperson (Mamata) has repeatedly stated that she has no problem in supporting the Congress in order to defeat the BJP. However, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury is claiming that he will fight Trinamul. This implies that he has no intention of defeating the BJP,” said Abhishek on Monday.
“If by strengthening the BJP in Bengal, the Congress is thinking of defeating the BJP (nationally), they are mistaken…. We have always maintained our stance, which is ‘No Vote to BJP’,” he added.
