Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari said on Wednesday that the Trinamul Congress had offered him the post of deputy chief minister days before he had defected to the BJP in December 2020.

"I was minister of five departments. I was chairman of HDA (Haldia Development Authority) and HRBC (Hooghly River Bridge Commissioner). I threw everything away and came (to the BJP). Last, on December 1, 2020, (Trinamul) offered me the deputy chief minister berth. I threw that away as well. Why? Because Bengal needed to be saved, nationalism needed to be saved," Adhikari said at a panchayat campaign event in East Midnapore's Egra.

Adhikari joined the BJP on December 19, 2020, in the presence of Union home minister Amit Shah.

Hitting back at the leader of the Opposition, Trinamul vice-president Jay Prakash Majumdar said he was witness to Adhikari "pleading" with Amit Shah to not put him behind bars.

"This happened at a hotel in Calcutta in the latter half of 2020. He begged Amit Shah to not implicate him in the Saradha or Narada cases. He said that he did not wish to go to jail even for a day. He is a coward," Majumdar said.

"He was ready to do anything Shah would ask him to. Whether he was offered the deputy chief ministerial post and on what ground he refused is his personal matter. But it is for sure that he took his escape route from central agencies with the help of the then observers of BJP in West Bengal, Kailash Vijayvargiya and Arvind Menon, who fixed his meeting with Shah," Majumdar added.

Majumdar left the BJP to join the Trinamul in 2022.