Most TMC turncoats skip BJP's meet to discuss poll debacle
KOLKATA: A meeting to discuss the poll debacle in BJP ended in a fiasco as the key turncoats from Trinamool Congress (TMC) did not turn up. BJP leaders Dilip Ghosh and Suvendu Adhikari were present. Of the 12 general secretaries of the party, only four were present. The state unit had called the meeting at its Hastings office on Friday evening.
Requesting anonymity, senior party leaders said: "They had come to become ministers and none of them could be seen after the poll results were announced on May 2. Many of them could not be contacted over telephone." It may be mentioned that out of 75 MLAs, 35 are from TMC, 25 from Left Front and 12 from Congress. The BJP has only 3 original party candidates.
The BJP is already on the back foot following the publication of an article in the current issue of Organiser, the RSS mouthpiece which held the inclusion of Trinamool leaders without assessing their strengths as one of the main causes for the saffron party's poll debacle.
Three key turncoats, Rajib Banerjee, Bharati Ghosh and Sabyasachi Dutta did not turn up. Banerjee lost to his Trinamool rival Kalyanendu Ghosh by over 42,000 votes. Ghosh was defeated by her Trinamool rival Humayun Kabir by over 14,000 votes and Dutta was defeated by Sujit Bose by over 7000 votes.
Locket Chatterjee, the party's MP who was defeated by Asit Mazumdar of Trinamool by over 18,000 votes skipped the meeting. Only two of the party's General Secretaries, Sayantan Basu and Jyotirmoy Singh Mahato, were present in the meeting.
However, Dilip Ghosh, the party's state president, said most of the leaders had been asked not to attend the meeting in view of the surge in Covid cases.
Political experts said the poor turnout suggested that the rift between the old guards and the new entrants was fast widening. The central BP leaders had highlighted the turncoats and neglected the old members. "They will have to pay a price for it and the state BJP will have to start from scratch to reorganise the party after the poll debacle," they maintained.
