india

Updated: Jun 25, 2019 11:31 IST

BJP leader Mukul Roy used a popular line from a Bollywood film to take a dig at West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee after one more Trinamool Congress MLA and ten district council members, including their chief, jumped ship.

Trinamool Congress MLA Wilson Champramary, South Dinajpur zila parishad president Lipika Roy and the other members were among those who switched sides to the Bharatiya Janata Party. Champramary is the fifth TMC MLA to have led the Trinamool recently.

Former MLA and the TMC’s ex-South Dinajpur unit president Biplab Mitra also joined the BJP.

“Yeh trailer hai, film abhi baaki hai (This is just a trailer, the film is yet to begin),” Roy said on Monday, according to news agency Asian News International.

The defections have given the BJP a majority in the council, which has 18 seats. South Dinajpur zila parishad is the first district council in the state that has been taken over by the opposition party.

The ruling TMC won all the 22 zila parishads in the last panchayat elections in 2018. The BJP wrested both South Dinajpur and Balurghat Lok Sabha seats from the TMC this year. Both these seats are in South Dinajpur district.

Mukul Roy said that the TMC leaders joining the BJP are an “extension of the first phase” which will continue till chief minister Mamata Banerjee collapses. “When the seven phases will complete, there will be no TMC government left in the state,” he was quoted by ANI as saying.

Mitra, considered as one of the architects of the Trinamool Congress in the district in north Bengal, was shunted out as the party’s district president after the Lok Sabha polls.

“The TMC has become a party of arrogant autocratic leaders. I had built the party in the district from scratch from 1998 but I was made to feel like an outsider in the party. My hard work of so many years was not respected,” Mitra said.

He hinted that several other TMC leaders from north Bengal are also likely to join the BJP soon.

Champramary, a three-term MLA from Kalchini constituency of north Bengal’s Alipurduar district, said he decided to switch to the BJP as he was fed up with the violence unleashed by Trinamool Congress in the state. He also alleged that he was not allowed to work for the people in his constituency by the local ruling party leaders.

The defections came a day after TMC president Mamata Banerjee threatened her party’s erstwhile leaders, who have jumped the ship with “consequences”.

Several Trinamool leaders have already joined the BJP after the state’s ruling party lost ground and the saffron party make significant gains in the Lok Sabha polls in West Bengal.

Soon after the announcement of Lok Sabha results on May 23, two TMC MLAs including Mukul Roy’s son Shubrangshu and 63 municipal councillors had joined the BJP followed by another legislator Munirul Islam.

Mamata Banerjee’s party’s MLAs Biswajit Das and Sunil Singh along with more than 24 TMC councillors joined the BJP last week.