West Bengal defection saga: Abhishek Banerjee claims '25 BJP MLAs want to join TMC'

Amid the growing exodus of BJP legislators to TMC, Diamond Harbour MP Abhishek Banerjee claimed that 25 more MLAs from the saffron party will jump ship soon. Speaking to the media after appearing before the ED on Monday in the alleged coal scam, the TMC general secretary mocked Union Home Minister Amit Shah for his assertion that BJP would win more than 200 seats in the West Bengal Assembly polls. Moreover, he did not rule out the possibility of the BJP turncoats resigning from the Assembly and emerging victorious in the bypolls. 

WB CM Mamata Banerjee's nephew Abhishek Banerjee remarked, "Amit Shah made tall claims about crossing 200 seats but BJP was restricted to 70 seats. 25 BJP MLAs want to join us. But we haven't taken them yet. As for those who feel that election will not happen as BJP MLAs are coming, I want to assure you in the capacity of my party's general secretary, BJP MLAs who are coming will resign if necessary and win the by-election. If you have the courage, stop us."

BJP's woes increase after polls

After a hard-fought election campaign, TMC sprung a surprise by decisively winning the 2021 West Bengal Assembly election by bagging 213 seats whereas BJP could win in only 77 constituencies. Speculation about Mukul Roy's political future started doing the rounds after Nandigram MLA Suvendu Adhikari pipped him to the Leader of the Opposition's post. An accused in the Narada sting operation case, Mukul Roy had resigned from TMC in September 2017 and joined BJP two months later.

While the then BJP national vice-president won the Krishnanagar Uttar seat in Nadia district, his son Subhrangshu who joined the party in May 2019 was defeated from the Bijpur seat from where he was the incumbent MLA. On June 11, Roy and his son rejoined TMC in the presence of CM Mamata Banerjee and her nephew. After a brief lull, Tanmoy Ghosh who won in Bishnupur on a BJP ticket switched allegiance to TMC on August 30. Biswajit Das and Soumen Roy, the sitting BJP legislators from Bagda and Kaliaganj respectively followed suit.

As Jagannath Sarkar and Nisith Pramanik chose to retain their Lok Sabha seats despite winning the Assembly polls, BJP's strength has now reduced to 71 seats. Furthermore, rumour mills are abuzz about BJP MLA Krishna Kalyani's possible defection to the Mamata Banerjee-led party. This is because he announced on September 5 that he won't attend any party programme.