BJP suspends its vanquished candidate for ‘anti-party’ activities

Kolkata: The BJP is learnt to have served a show cause notice to its vanquished candidate of Diamond Harbour Lok Sabha Constituency Abhijit Das and has temporarily suspended him for allegedly indulging in anti-party activities.

It reportedly came to light that the action against Das was executed by the disciplinary committee of the state BJP unit. Das, however, has told the media that he did not receive any copy of the letter which was doing rounds in the media. “If not an expulsion letter, then any kind of show-cause letter cannot be shared in public. Those who have done this must be issued a show-cause notice as well,” he told the media. “We have issued a show cause letter to the person who was responsible for this. If needed, he will be suspended as well.

This has been done for not following the party’s discipline and decorum,” BJP state president Sukanta Majumdar told the media. Such a move against Das comes a day after a fact-finding team of the BJP which was visiting Bengal to probe the allegations of post-poll violence faced protests from its own party workers in Diamond Harbour Lok Sabha Constituency on Tuesday.

Former Chief Minister of Tripura, Biplab Deb, who was part of the central team, had to encounter protests in South 24-Parganas Amtala where a group of BJP supporters blocked his car and insisted he get down and meet them.

The bone of contention of the protestors was the alleged inaction by the party’s district leadership in the face of attacks by the ruling party (TMC) workers following the conclusion of the Lok Sabha polls in Bengal.

Allegations have surfaced that Das was responsible for orchestrating the protest. He was accused of not attending a party meeting on Tuesday and also creating infighting in the party in the South 24-Parganas district. Amtala comes under the Diamond Harbour Lok Sabha Constituency where TMC candidate Abhishek Banerjee won for the third consecutive time with a vote margin of over 7 lakh.