Kolkata, July 9: Three former TMC Rajya Sabha MPs, including Sushmita Dev and Sukhendu Sekhar Ray, joined the BJP on Thursday and, within hours, were named the saffron party’s candidates for the Rajya Sabha bypolls from West Bengal, underlining both their political rehabilitation and the party’s calibrated shift in inducting leaders from the erstwhile ruling dispensation.
The BJP’s Central Election Committee announced the names of Dev, Ray and Prakash Chik Baraik as its nominees for the July 24 Rajya Sabha bypolls, days after the Election Commission notified elections to the three Upper House seats vacated following their resignations from the TMC and the Rajya Sabha last month.
The development marked the first major induction of former TMC leaders into the BJP since it swept the Assembly polls and assumed power in the state, signalling that the party’s post-election embargo on Trinamool entrants would not extend to leaders it considers politically credible and free from corruption taint.
Earlier this evening, state BJP president Samik Bhattacharya inducted the trio into the party at its Salt Lake headquarters.
Asked then whether they would be fielded in the Rajya Sabha bypolls, Bhattacharya had smiled and replied, “Let the speculations continue.” The suspense ended in a few hours when the BJP central leadership formally cleared their candidature.
The political significance of Thursday’s developments lay as much in who joined as in why the BJP accepted them.
Ever since the BJP’s assembly election victory, the party leadership, including Bhattacharya, had repeatedly maintained that its doors were closed to leaders from the TMC, seeking to draw a sharp distinction with what it had often criticised as a culture of political defections.
Bhattacharya, however, described Thursday’s induction as an “exceptional” case rather than a departure from that policy. “We had said the doors are closed for Trinamool leaders. We stand by that. But those who did not indulge in corruption, did not oppress people, did not sell jobs or snatch away people’s rights were always welcome to join us in the fight against the TMC and rebuild Bengal,” he said. (PTI)
