The Bharatiya Janata Party in West Bengal is divided over the return of an ex-member and for having to embrace old foes as new friends. In hushed tones that could become shrill voices of protest, as they did before the assembly elections in 2021, a section of the party’s West Bengal unit is asking an existential question: Does loyalty amount to nothing?
Arjun Singh, Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader who joined the BJP on 15 March, is expected to get a ticket for the upcoming Lok Sabha election. Politicians jumping ship before and after polls hardly bothers voters anymore, but what irked a section of the BJP’s state unit and many of the party’s supporters is the fact that Singh was not joining the party for the first time.
He had been with the party from 2019 to 2022. After the BJP lost to the TMC in the 2021 assembly polls, Singh went back to the TMC. Now, ahead of the general election, he is again with the BJP. A local BJP leader, who has spent many years with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) before joining the party, said on the condition of anonymity that Singh is treating the BJP as a revolving door, coming and going as he pleases.
Repeating the same mistakes
Apart from Singh, TMC MP from Tamluk constituency Dibyendu Adhikari, brother of senior BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari, joined the BJP last Friday. On 6 March, senior TMC leader Tapas Roy also joined the BJP after resigning as an MLA and quitting the party.
This is an old pattern—one that West Bengal’s voters and the BJP state workers have seen before the 2021 assembly elections. There was an exodus of leaders from the ruling TMC to the BJP, from Mukul Roy to Suvendu Adhikari.
A joke that did the rounds in 2021 was that every time Minister of Home Affairs Amit Shah got on a plane to Kolkata, a chunk of TMC leaders got ready to dump their old party and join the BJP with much fanfare.
Another joke suggested that at this rate, the TMC would have all but two leaders left in the party, Mamata Banerjee and Abhishek Banerjee.
Instead, the TMC won the polls by a landslide, even though most opinion polls predicted either a close fight or victory for the BJP. The BJP became the official opposition with 77 seats.
One of the reasons for this defeat was that with so many leaders from the TMC joining the party just before polls, the BJP had diluted its image as the ‘party with a difference’. The voters saw hardly any difference between the TMC and the BJP and chose to vote for the incumbent government.
The rank and file of the BJP also got disheartened after being forced to work for ex-TMC leaders in their party—their sworn enemies. This even led to violent protests during ticket distribution in March 2021, with workers vandalising their own party offices.
One of the candidates opposed by the BJP members was Jitendra Tiwari from Pandabeswar constituency, alleging that he had unleashed a reign of terror on them as a TMC leader. The party workers refused to campaign for Tiwari and demanded he be replaced by another candidate. They also threatened to bring in an independent candidate against the BJP if Tiwari wasn’t removed, India Today reported on 19 March 2021.
With the induction of Dibyendu Adhikari, Singh, and Tapas Roy, the BJP seems to be making the same mistake in 2024.
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Past imperfect, future tense
Why would TMC leaders want to join the BJP even after the results of 2021? One could argue that they were either sidelined in the TMC (Singh was denied a ticket) or were facing threats from the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). Roy’s house was raided by the ED in January 2024.
Some TMC leaders who joined BJP like Arjun Singh shifted back to TMC because of post-poll violence in 2021 that targeted BJP workers.
“After I became the MP from BJP, the way post-poll political violence happened in West Bengal, our area was the worst hit. I was tolerating atrocities on myself, but to save the workers, I had to keep some distance from the party (BJP) for some days,” Singh said after rejoining the BJP.
But why would the BJP take leaders and workers from the TMC even after the 2021 debacle? Things came to a head when the BJP had to reverse its decision to induct seven TMC activists into its fold, who were allegedly involved in the murder of its own party worker, Abhijit Sarkar, The Times of India reported on 11 March. In 2021, Sarkar was killed in Beliaghata in post-poll violence. His brother, Biswajit, had threatened to cut off from the BJP if the alleged murderers were allowed into the party. Senior members of the BJP, too, had objected to their induction.
Former state chief of the party, Tathagata Roy, had tweeted that “culprits of Abhijit Sarkar’s murder” should be “immediately expelled” from the BJP.
This led to some Bengal BJP workers putting up “Modi ka Soytelaa Parivar” next to their names on social media bios, as opposed to “Modi ka Parivar”.
The BJP’s tendency to induct leaders and workers from the TMC, often by ignoring its own members, may stem from its preference to bet on winning horses over the ones in its own stable. It is a fact that one of the BJP’s most charismatic Bengal leaders in recent years, Suvendu Adhikari, came from the TMC. However, there is also the example of Mukul Roy who failed to fulfil his promises to the BJP and went right back to the TMC after the 2021 loss.
As a local BJP leader said, one doesn’t get a Himanta Biswa Sarma in every party hopper and the party should not lose its own by flirting with the unknown.
Deep Halder is a writer and journalist. He tweets @deepscribble. Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)