Now, Muslim MLA quits TMC to join BJP

KOLKATA: The BJP kept up its surgical strike on Trinamool Congress on Wednesday, luring away yet another MLA — this time a member of the Muslim community — along with a former MLA and Trinamool Youth Congress organisers from Birbhum, a day after three MLAs and 50-odd councillors from four municipalities in North 24 Parganas took up the BJP flag.
Manirul Islam, the latest defector, is the Trinamool MLA from Labhpur in Birbhum, a district where minorities are an influential factor. More significantly, Manirul was also responsible for giving Trinamool a major lead from his assembly segment in the recently concluded Lok Sabha polls.

On Wednesday, Manirul dumped the party and joined the BJP at the latter’s headquarters in Delhi. He joins three other MLAs (Trinamool’s Bijpur MLA Subhranshu Roy, Congress’s Bishnupur MLA Tusharkanti Bhattacharya and CPM’s Hemtabad MLA Debendra Roy), who crossed over to the saffron camp in the presence of its central leadership in Delhi on Tuesday.
The trend of jumping ship shows no signs of a let-up, and more developments are on the cards. On Wednesday, the Darjeeling Municipality, too, seemed to be going the way of the four North 24 Parganas civic boards (of Bhatpara, Kanchrapara, Naihati and Halisahar). As many as 17 Bimal Gurung loyalist councillors in the 32-member municipality brought a no-confidence motion against the chairman.
More worrying for the ruling party would be the fact that the spate of defections may be inching closer to Kolkata, with Bidhannagar mayor Sabyasachi Dutta keeping up his unsettling chatter against his party.
Manirul had courted controversy in 2014 for his hate speech, when he boasted in a public gathering that he had “trampled three persons” who dared to come in his way. BJP, which has gained a toehold in some Birbhum pockets, will no doubt find great use for him in breaking Trinamool’s support bases, particularly among the minorities.
Former MLA Gadadhar Hazra, Birbhum Trinamool Youth Congress general secretary Md Asif Iqbal and another youth organiser, Nemai Das, have also joined BJP.
BJP leader Mukul Roy was quick to showcase Manirul as a part of PM-designate Narendra Modi’s “sab ka sath, sab ka vikas” action plan, while BJP national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya was more scathing against the Mamata Banerjee government. “Bengal has come under the shadow of terrorist politics. Trinamool organisers are finding it suffocating in the party because of Mamata Banerjee’s arrogance,” he said.
Closer home, the Bidhannagar mayor’s blunt observation that Trinamool lost many seats because “people voted against it” is more cause for worry for the ruling party. Dutta is the first Trinamool politician to have accepted the situation as it came, even as most seniors seemed to have gone into denial mode. His striking candour is being interpreted as an exit song ahead of the Trinamool review meet on May 31.
He seized the opportunity to take a dig at his adversaries in the party, particularly Sujit Bose, without naming him. “Some people had kept the rotten potatoes aside before the elections. The results show that the fresh potatoes trailed in their assembly segments. And the rotten potato in charge of Rajarhat-Gopalpur gave a lead of 23,600 votes. I was not in charge of the Barasat Lok Sabha constituency. The person in charge trailed in his assembly segment by 18,500 votes and also lost in his own ward. This is why he got a promotion in the party. Now, he will become the leader of Bengal,” said Dutta. “This is the people’s verdict against those moving around in siren-blaring vehicles.”
Bose said this was not the proper time for flippant debates. “We need to continue with our work for the people. We are busy doing a post-mortem of the poll performance. And the person who is pointing fingers hasn’t addressed a single election meeting where he was in charge,” he said.