BJP Parliamentarians who won Assembly seats will not resign as MPs

KOLKATA: Two BJP Parliamentarians Nisith Pramanik and Jagannath Sarkar, who won their seats — Dinhata and Santipur respectively — in the recently-held state Assembly elections will continue as MPs and resign from the Legislative Assembly. As per norms, by-elections will be held in Dinhata and Santipur seats within six months.

The decision was taken by the BJP's Central leadership on Tuesday. Pramanik defeated Udayan Guha of Trinamool Congress (TMC) by 57 votes in Dinhata. Sarkar was elected from Santipur Assembly seat.

Coming down heavily on the saffron party, TMC Rajya Sabha MP Derek O'Brien tweeted: "BJP fielded 4 sitting LS MPs, incl a Union Min & 1 RS MP for #BengalPolls. 3 lost. 2 won. Now these 2 to quit as MLAs. They were elected last week! World's largest (sic) party have set a world record for electoral egg on face. One Nation One Election! What say Narendra, Amit." For the first time in the electoral history of Bengal since the first election was held in 1952, BJP had fielded four sitting MPs. While two of the MPs won, two lost miserably.

BJP MP Locket Chatterjee was defeated by Asit Mazumdar by 18, 417 votes from Chinsurah seat. Aroop Biswas, the sitting MLA from Tollygunge, defeated BJP MP Babul Supriyo by over 50,000 votes.

Speculations were rife that both Pramanik and Sarkar would not relinquish the MP posts as they did not take the oath on May 6 and 7. By-elections will also be held in two seats in Murshidabad, namely, Shamsergunj and Jangipur as the candidates, Rezaul Haq of Congress and Pradip Nandy of RSP died before the election.

By-election will be held in Khardah seat, which fell vacant following the death of Trinamool candidate Kajal Sinha. When the result of the election was out on May 2, it was found that Sinha had won from Khardah.

Political experts said it was likely that Amit Mitra who did not contest the election but was sworn-in as the Finance Minister would be nominated from the seat in the by-election. Mitra was elected from the seat twice in 2011 and 2016. He did not contest because of ill health in 2021. Mamata Banerjee will also have to face the election within six months.

As people's mandate was largely in favour of TMC, political analysts opined that it would be difficult for the BJP to retain the two seats. On the other hand, Trinamool will have the chance to increase the number of seats in the Assembly further.