Bangshibadan Barman and Nagen Roy aka Ananta Maharaj, two leaders who represent different factions of the Greater Cooch Behar Peoples’ Association (GCPA), are staying away from the campaign ahead of the bypoll in the Sitai Assembly seat of Cooch Behar district.

While Barman is with the Trinamool Congress, Roy is a Rajya Sabha member of the BJP.

“I will not go out to campaign for the BJP candidate and have left it with the people to decide as to whom they will vote for,” said Roy.

Barman spoke in similar terms.

“I am always with chief minister Mamata Banerjee. But TMC has not called me to campaign for their candidate at the by-poll and till now, I don’t have any plan to campaign for them,” said GCPA leader Barman.

In Sitai, byelections would be held on November 13, along with five other Assembly seats of the state. The seat, where the majority of the voters are from the Rajbanshi community, turned vacant as Jagadish Chandra Barma Basunia, the TMC MLA who had won the seat in 2021, resigned after he was elected as the MP from Cooch Behar seat at the Lok Sabha polls held earlier this year.

The TMC has fielded Sangita Roy, his wife, as the candidate for the bypoll. The BJP, on the other hand, has fielded Dipak Kumar Roy, a veteran party leader who had lost to Basunia at the Lok Sabha polls.

Such reluctance of both the GCPA leaders, who have their support bases among Rajbanshis, to go out and campaign for the TMC and BJP candidates, respectively, has evoked mixed reactions among both parties.

While a section of leaders of both BJP and TMC believe that the presence of the GCPA leaders in the campaign would have helped them, others in the party feel their absence was actually an advantage.

“There is a perception that the TMC has piggybacked on Bangshibadan Barman to draw the support of Rajbanshis. In fact, some state leaders of our party still believe that he has a huge number of followers. This time, as he is not campaigning for us, we have a chance to prove that we don’t need him to draw votes here,” said a senior local TMC functionary.

He pointed out that although Barman is holding two state government posts as the chairman of the Rajbanshi Development and Cultural Board and the Rajbanshi Bhasha Academy, he has time and again spoken out against TMC.

“Recently, he spoke against our leader and minister Udayan Guha. We should stop giving him so much indulgence,” said the leader.

A district BJP leader echoed the Trinamool leader while speaking about Roy. “We fail to understand why Nagen Roy was made a Rajya Sabha member. He didn’t campaign for BJP at the Lok Sabha polls and this time, ahead of the bypoll, he is aloof. We don’t think he has delivered any responsibility as an MP and a BJP leader. We are not banking on him for votes,” said the leader.