Kolkata: Earlier this month, when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s Bengal unit shared its list of ‘star campaigners’ for the assembly by-election at chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s constituency, Bhabanipur, in Kolkata, it surprised the state’s political observers as the list included the name of Babul Supriyo.
The singer-turned-politician who served as a junior minister in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cabinet since 2014 had announced quitting the BJP and retiring from politics altogether after the Union Cabinet removed him from the environment ministry in the July reshuffle. He had also announced that he would resign from the Lok Sabha but changed his mind on this after the BJP’s top leadership, including national president J.P. Nadda, convinced him not to resign from the Lok Sabha even if he did not want to continue with political activities.
For the BJP, Supriyo’s resignation from the Lok Sabha was of greater trouble than his retirement from politics, as the resignation would necessitate a by-election in Asansol Lok Sabha and the BJP thought that it had a bleak prospect of winning a Lok Sabha by-election in the state at present.
On September 10, soon after the list of the BJP’s ‘star campaigners’ became public, Supriyo put all speculations to rest by clarifying that he was not going to campaign.
But what he did on Saturday – joining the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in the presence of the party’s national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee – sent shockwaves in the BJP’s Bengal leadership. No one in the party’s Bengal unit had an iota of idea about this move, a senior leader of Bengal BJP said on condition of anonymity.
The MP from Asansol promptly made the BJP’s worst fear come true – he announced he would soon resign from the Lok Sabha. Once he resigns, a by-election should take place within six months.
Meanwhile, when journalists in Kolkata asked if he would be campaigning for Mamata Banerjee in the September 30 by-election in Bhawanipur, Supriyo said, “Does Mamata Banerjee need Babul Supriyo to campaign for her?”
And then he said he will take part in the campaign if his new party asks for it.
The BJP’s state unit president Dilip Ghosh refused to comment. “The central leadership was looking after issues concerning him,” he told the media in Kolkata.
He is the first BJP Lok Sabha MP to join the TMC.
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Gains and losses
Supriyo was most likely to lose his berth in the Union government because of his poor electoral success in 2021. He lost to TMC’s Aroop Biswas from Tollygunje by a whopping margin of 50,080 votes, while in his Lok Sabha area in Paschim Bardhaman district, the BJP lost in six of seven assembly seats, winning only one with a thin margin of 679 votes. The BJP thought he did not have an electoral impact.
“When he first announced his retirement from politics in a Facebook post, the party’s central leadership did not take it seriously. But alarm bells rung the moment he announced, only a few hours later, that he would also resign from the Lok Sabha. The central leadership promptly swung into action to resist him from doing so,” the senior BJP leader cited above told The Wire on Saturday.
After meeting the BJP’s top leadership in New Delhi soon after, Supriyo announced that he would continue to serve as a Lok Sabha member even though he would not be involved in the saffron party’s activities.
During his seven-year-long political career, Supriyo never had a good rapport with the party’s Bengal leadership, especially state unit president Dilip Ghosh, even though he had a good relation with Mukul Roy and BJP Rajya Sabha MP Swapan Dasgupta.
“It was only because the central leadership gave him importance that he got some say in Bengal. But once he was removed from the Union Cabinet, he had nothing to deal with Ghosh and other Bengal leaders,” a BJP MLA told The Wire, refusing to be identified.
“I could not turn down the big opportunity I was offered to work for Bengal’s betterment,” Supriyo said on Saturday, while explaining his change of mind on retiring from politics.
A berth in the Upper House?
However, according to sources in the TMC, Supriyo may be given a berth in the Rajya Sabha.
“It’s quite intriguing that Supriyo joined the TMC soon after the party asked Rajya Sabha member Arpita Ghosh to resign and she obliged. The party has a vacancy in Rajya Sabha now. We thought the party asked Ghosh to resign considering to send either of Yashwant Sinha or Saket Gokhale to the Upper House but now it seems the party has Supriyo in mind, too,” said a TMC Rajya Sabha MP, refusing to be identified.
Ghosh was appointed as the TMC’s state unit general secretary soon after she resigned from Rajya Sabha on Thursday.
But what could the TMC gain by taking in a leader who had apparently failed to prove his influence on the public, and whom his own party did not value?
According to a senior leader of the TMC, the party sensed the BJP’s discomfort over Supriyo’s possible resignation from the Lok Sabha and promptly decided to try to win him over.
“It’s an embarrassment for the BJP more than anything else. Besides, our victory in a Lok Sabha by-election in a seat held by the BJP will surely do a lot of damage to the morale of the BJP’s workers and supporters in Bengal. The induction happened as part of our Mission 2024 plan,” the TMC leader said, referring to the Lok Sabha elections slated to take place in 2024.
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“Snatching a Lok Sabha seat from the BJP through a by-election victory in 2022 would do the party a lot of help in boosting the morale of the workers not only in West Bengal but also in Tripura and Assam – the two northeastern states the TMC has been eying for making inroads,” another minister from Bengal told The Wire.
Only a few days ago, the TMC nominated Sushmita Dev, a former Congress Lok Sabha MP from Assam, who is at present overseeing the TMC’s ventures in Assam and Tripura to the Rajya Sabha.
The TMC soon created another vacancy in the Rajya Sabha by asking Ghosh to resign.
Since Mamata Banerjee’s return to power for a third term, four BJP MLAs have switched over to the TMC – Krishnanagar MLA and former BJP national vice-president Mukul Roy, Bishnupur MLA Tanmay Ghosh, Kaliaganj MLA Soumen Roy and Bagda MLA Biswajit Das.
“Supriyo’s change of camp, especially if he gets rewarded, would encourage more BJP MLAs to look to change camp,” said a Bengal BJP MP.
