I’ve Returned Home: Ex Bengal BJP VP Returns To TMC

| Updated: 22 May, 2022 11:14 pm IST

NEW DELHI: Giving a fresh jolt to Bharatiya Janata Party in Bengal, its former state vice-president Arjun Singh on Sunday returned to Trinamool Congress.

Singh rejoined TMC in the presence of the party’s national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee at his office in South Kolkata.

Talking to the media after re-joining TMC, Singh said, “I have returned to my house. I was here (in TMC) from the very beginning. Due to some misunderstandings, I left TMC to join BJP.”

“One cannot practice politics in Bengal sitting in air-conditioned rooms and through Facebook. You have to be on the ground to understand. This is the reason for BJP’s downtrend,” Singh, who had left TMC just before the Lok Sabha elections in 2019, said.

Singh said that he is upset with the centre’s decision to remove the notification capping jute prices at Rs 6,500 per quintal and decided to leave the party.

“I have tried many times to make the centre understand the adversities people are facing due to permanent closures of several jute mills,” Singh said.

Mamata Banerjee in the month of November wrote to Prime minister Narendra Modi for the revival of the jute industry.
While speaking on whether he would resign from his parliamentary seat, Singh affirms that two MPs are there who won on TMC tickets but joined BJP, if they resign, he would do the same within an hour.

Sushmita Dev, RS MP who joined TMC from Congress told The New Indian, “The sitting members of Parliament from a party in power are joining Mamata Banerjee because they have realised that her leadership in Bengal is unchallenged due to her work. Be it a politics of polarization or communal divide, it has failed in front of Mamata Banerjee’s good governance.”

Dilip Ghosh, MP from Bengal and BJP national vice president said, “Only he can say why he went back. But I think failing to tolerate TMC’s torture he has returned to the party. When he joined BJP, many of his businesses were stopped from functioning, now he simply surrendered.”