Kolkata: With barely days to go earlier than the announcement of the dates for the final elections, Kunar Hembram, the sitting BJP MP from West Bengal’s Jhargram, has stop the social gathering citing “personal reasons”.
Hembram despatched his resignation letter to state BJP chief Sukanta Majumdar Friday.
Talking to ThePrint, Majumdar confirmed receiving the letter, including, “Hembram has informed that his health is not good and he won’t be able to work for the party, he hadn’t been active for quite some time now.”
Requested if he had plans to affix one other social gathering, Hembram mentioned, “I want to distance myself from the party for personal reasons. The BJP is a big national party. My leaving it won’t affect its functioning.”
The BJP is but to declare its Lok Sabha candidate from Jhargram, one of many 18 seats it gained within the state within the earlier normal elections.
A CPI(M) fortress from 1977 until 2014, Jhargram is situated in West Bengal’s tribal belt, often known as Jangalmahal. The Trinamool Congress (TMC) gained this seat in 2014.
Nevertheless, it misplaced the seat to the BJP in 2019.
A complete seven meeting segments fall underneath Jhargram — which is a reserved (ST) Lok Sabha seat. All seven seats have been gained by the TMC within the 2021 West Bengal Meeting elections.
Contesting on a BJP ticket for the primary time in 2019, Hembram had defeated the TMC’s Birbaha Soren by a margin of 11,767 votes. Hembram was additionally a member of the parliamentary committee on coal, mines and metal within the seventeenth Lok Sabha.
Although BJP sources say his title was not amongst these being mentioned for the Jhargram seat, the social gathering is but to concern any official assertion on this regard.
Apparently, barely 24 hours earlier than Hembram resigned from the social gathering, BJP MLA from Ranaghat-Dakshin constituency in Nadia district Mukut Mani Adhikari joined the TMC, alleging that “Nadia had been neglected” by the BJP authorities on the Centre.
“I want to work for the development of the people under Mamata Banerjee and Abhishek Banerjee,” Adhikari mentioned Thursday throughout a public assembly in Kolkata.
The TMC claims Adhikari was sad with the BJP for not delivering on its guarantees. “BJP leaders have understood the party doesn’t want to work for the people of Bengal. They are blocking Central funds and they have understood BJP’s real face and thus they are leaving the party because they want betterment for Bengal,” mentioned TMC chief Santanu Sen.
Towards that backdrop, murmurs grew Friday in political circles concerning the BJP dropping a key face to the TMC within the Matua stronghold of Bongaon — Union minister Shantanu Thakur’s MLA brother Subrata Thakur. The BJP finally posted a video of him denying these rumours and assuring supporters that he was nonetheless within the BJP.
“I was given a ticket by the BJP in 2014 polls, and have been associated with the party since. I believe in the leadership of PM Modi and I am not joining the TMC,” he mentioned.
These developments come at a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi has already launched the BJP’s marketing campaign in West Bengal, which sends 42 MPs to the Lok Sabha.
With 4 rallies in every week, Modi has addressed all constituencies that the BJP is but to declare candidates for: Barasat, Krishnanagar, Arambagh and Darjeeling. Of the 4, Darjeeling is the one seat with a sitting BJP MP — Raju Bista.
In response to political analyst Snigdhendu Bhattacharya, “People witnessed a highly charged-up 2021 polls in West Bengal where big faces dumped their own (parties) and joined hands with the opposing force. So, any leader leaving at this point is of very little significance.”
“If the BJP decided to field the sitting MP under whom they lost all their MLAs, it would call for introspection. So both TMC and BJP will see more leaders leaving and joining rival camps,” he added.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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