Kolkata: After the recent exodus of Bharatiya Janata Party legislators to Trinamool Congress, speculations are rife that four more legislators will also follow suit. Spotlight is on four legislators including Hiran Chattopadhyay from Kharagpur in West Midnapore district, Niraj Jimba from Darjeeling, Sukumar Roy from Cooch Behar (North) and Dibakar Gharami from Sonamukhi in Bankura district of West Bengal.
The absence of these four legislators in different party programs led to such speculations. In addition, their absence from West Bengal assembly sessions has also added fuel to fire.
Recently, the party's West Bengal unit organized a program to facilitate the newly appointed state president in Bengal, Sukanta Majumdar and the party's national vice-president, Dilip Ghosh. The absence of the four legislators led to speculations. The party's elected Lok Sabha member from Hooghly, Locket Chatterjee was also absent at the program.
BJP sources said that the four legislators even ignored the whip from the party to be present at the program. It is learnt that the leader of the opposition Suvendu Adhikari personally talked to each of these four legislators and enquired about the problems faced by them. However, the meeting did not yield any positive results.
BJP sources said that already the names of four legislators have been forwarded to the party high command in New Delhi as possible turncoats. The BJP's national president, JP Nadda decided to directly intervene in preventing the exodus of elected representatives from the party. The decision was taken after elected BJP Lok Sabha member and singer- turned- politician, Babul Supriyo joined Trinamool Congress.
However, BJP chief whip in the assembly, Manoj Tigga tried to downplay the absence of four legislators at the felicitation programme of Sukanto Majumdar and Dilip Ghosh. "They could not attend the program because of some personal reasons. However, at some places, the ruling Trinamool Congress is trying to put pressure on our MLAs and also spreading rumours about them. None of the BJP legislators are quitting the party. These are all baseless rumours propagated by Trinamool Congress," he said.
To recall, in the 2021 West Bengal assembly elections a total of 77 BJP legislators got elected. But soon the number of BJP MLAs came down to 75, as Nishith Pramanik and Jagannath Sarkar resigned in order to retain their seats as Lok Sabha members. The number further declined to the current strength of 71 following the resignation of four BJP legislators.
Sources say that if by any chance the number comes down to 69 then it will be difficult for the party in getting the desired number of Rajya Sabha members. With the present strength in the assembly, BJP can manage to send two persons to the upper house of the Parliament from the state.
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