Nantu Paul, a veteran politician of Siliguri and a former Trinamul councillor of Siliguri Municipal Corporation, joined the BJP in Calcutta on Wednesday.

It is Paul’s fourth political party in his political career that spans 33 years, and started from the CPM. The CPM and Trinamul apart, he was also in the Congress briefly.

Paul and his wife Manjushree, also a former councillor, were inducted into the BJP by the party’s national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya along with some other Trinamul leaders.

“My only aim is to work for Siliguri’s progress. Without central assistance, it can never happen. That is why I joined the BJP,” Paul said over the phone.

In 1988, Paul was elected ward commissioner of the then Siliguri municipality on a CPM’s ticket. In 1994, when the civic body was upgraded to a municipal corporation, he was elected councillor.

He stayed with the CPM till 2004 when he joined Trinamul. After a couple of months, he joined Congress, and in 2006, contested from the Siliguri Assembly seat and lost to Asok Bhattacharya. In 2014, he rejoined Trinamul and stayed on.

But last month, as the Trinamul leadership announced Omprakash Mishra as its Siliguri nominee, Paul quit Trinamul and announced that he would contest as an Independent from Siliguri and filed his nomination on March 24.

But on Wednesday, Paul said he would withdraw his nomination and support the BJP’s Siliguri nominee Shankar Ghosh.

Asked for his reaction, Ranjan Sarkar, the Darjeeling (plains) district Trinamul president, said Paul was expelled from Trinamul after he submitted nomination as an Independent and violated party rules. “He has lost is credibility….his presence in the political arena will not affect our party in any manner,” said Sarkar.