New Delhi: In a jolt to West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, Rajya Sabha TMC MP Dinesh Trivedi had resigned from Rajya Sabha on February 12, 2021.
The former TMC leader has joined the BJP today in the presence of BJP President JP Nadda.
This comes after Trivedi hinted that he would resign from the party as he was feeling suffocated.
After Mukul Roy and Suvendu Adhikari joined the BJP, the contention of the Trinamool Congress was that leaders like Roy and Adhikari had joined the saffron camp to save their skins from CBI or ED because of their involvement with previous financial scams. However, when Rajeeb Banerjee and Probir Ghosal joined the BJP, the above logic of the TMC did not work, owing to the clean images and overall acceptability of both Banerjee and Ghosal.
Read: Dinesh Trivedi likely to join BJP soon
Subsequently, the logic of TMC against Banerjee was that quitting the ministerial berth just four months before the state assembly polls does not really speak of any high moral position. By naming Banerjee or Ghosal, some Trinamool leaders also said some leaders were quitting the party realising that they will not be offered candidature this time.
But any of the two logics of the TMC falls flat in the case of Trivedi, a man of polished and clean identity and one of the very few polished and suave speakers in the party. He had been adjudged as the best Parliamentarian.
"I am resigning from Rajya Sabha today. There is violence happening in my state. We cannot speak anything here," said TMC Rajya Sabha MP Dinesh Trivedi.
Read: Will Dinesh Trivedi's exit be a real pain for Trinamool Congress?
While announcing his resignation, he said, "Swami Vivekanand has said 'arise, awake, and stop not until the goal is reached.' And I cannot keep quiet."
He said, "I am grateful to my party that they've sent me here. I'm feeling suffocated that we're not able to do anything over violence in the state. My soul tells me that if you can't do anything sitting here, then you must resign. I will continue to work for people of WB."
Trivedi, a former railway minister and two-time Lok Sabha MP, was sent to Rajya Sabha last year by TMC after losing the parliamentary polls in 2019. He is reported to have had some issues with a senior Rajya Sabha member of the party for the past few months.
(With Agency Inputs)
