At least three Trinamool Congress MLAs are talking to the Bharatiya Janata Party in West Bengal, fed-up as they are of the Mamata Banerjee government’s “minority appeasement policies”, senior BJP sources in the state have told The Sunday Guardian. One of the TMC leaders is an MLA from the Kolkata area and is a minister in Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s Cabinet. The other two MLAs belong to the Burdwan district.
Authoritative sources in the Trinamool Congress too confirmed that the possibility of defection was discussed at a closed door meeting attended by top TMC leaders, including the Chief Minister in the West Bengal Assembly, ahead of the Governor’s address to the MLAs. At the meeting, the top leadership said that they knew that three MLAs, “out of whom one was a minister”, were in touch with the BJP. They said that the party was keeping a close watch on them and they should fall in line or there would be trouble.
BJP sources told this newspaper that these MLAs, like many other TMC MLAs, were unhappy with some of the steps that Mamata Banerjee was taking with the intention “to appease one particular community” especially after coming back to power in May last year. “These three MLAs have been in constant touch with us for the past few days and they have told us that they were not happy with the way the party was dealing with sensitive issues,” said a senior Kolkata-based BJP functionary.
“The TMC has been constantly engaging in appeasement politics for the last few years and therefore their leaders are feeling uncomfortable about continuing in a party that does not respect the majority community’s sentiments. They are welcome to our party and we will be strengthened with their presence,” said a senior BJP leader said.
The two MLAs from Burdwan district are unhappy with the top leadership after the TMC and the state government failed to take any steps to control communal tension in some areas of the district.
West Bengal is witnessing a surge in communal violence, where the majority community has been attacked in Dhulagarh-like riots, the worship of Goddess Sarawasti has been forcefully stopped in schools, Durga idols have been desecrated, among other similar incidents.
A top leader in the TMC, on the condition of anonymity stated that the party was aware of this development and was keeping a close watch on the disgruntled leaders who were in touch with the BJP.
There is much resentment within the TMC itself about their government turning a blind eye to such incidents, but party sources say that no one is willing to rock the boat for fear of “Didi”, as Mamata Banerjee is popularly known. The minority community, which comprises around 27%-30% of the state’s population, voted nearly en bloc in the last two Assembly elections, thus helping Banerjee to come to power. Critics say that to maintain her vote bank the CM is turning a blind eye to the rise of radicalism in the state, and to the fact that extremists infiltrating from Bangladesh are influencing the local minority population to vitiate communal peace.
The BJP is emerging as a vocal opposition to Mamata Banerjee on this, despite having only six MLAs (3 own, 3 of alliance partner GJM) in an Assembly of 295, apart from two Lok Sabha MPs.