Politics
Dinesh Trivedi, Jatu Lahiri Latest in the List TMC Leaders to Join BJP
In a significant political development on Saturday – former TMC Rajya Sabha MP Dinesh Trivedi joined the BJP in the presence of the party’s national president JP Nadda and Union Minister Piyush Goyal in New Delhi.
Trivedi isn’t the latest in the long list of defections because Jatu Lahiri – another important TMC leader – too joined the BJP after having a long meeting with BJP vice-president Mukul Roy in Kolkata.
Lahiri is the current MLA from the Shibpur Assembly constituency, but this time he was not given the ticket to contest the poll. “Till my last breath I will work for the BJP. I have not joined BJP to get the ticket,” Lahiri said.
Meanwhile, after joining the BJP Dinesh Trivedi said, “It’s a golden moment for me which I had been waiting for.”
He said, “Bengal has immense potential but it is unfortunate that people are left with no other options but to migrate to other cities for jobs. The state is full of corruption and gundaraj. Today, the people of Bengal are happy that a parivartan (change) is going to take place under BJP.”
Nadda while welcoming him in the party said, “We are happy to welcome Dinesh Trivedi ji in the BJP parivar. Actually, he was the right person in the wrong party. Now he is in the right party.”
On February 12, Trinamool Congress leader Dinesh Trivedi had resigned as a Rajya Sabha MP.
Then, speaking on the floor of the house in the Parliament, Dinesh Trivedi said that he was feeling ‘restless’, ‘suffocated’ and finding it difficult to work in the TMC for quite some time.
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“We came from the land of Tagore but violence is upsetting. Today, my consciousness is asking me to resign against the misrule so that I can freely serve the people in my ‘Janmabhoomi’,” he had said.
Earlier, in March 2012, he was made to resign as a Union Railway Minister chief minister Mamata Banerjee. She was reportedly upset with Dinesh Trivedi over the train fare hikes he announced in the West Bengal rail budget. Trivedi had reportedly not consulted the Trinamool Congress over the budget.
In the recent past, several leaders came out of TMC and joined the BJP ahead of the West Bengal elections in 2021. Suvendhu Adhikari, Arindam Bhattacharya, Rajib Banerjee, Vaishali Dalmia and Jitendra Tiwari are among them.
The West Bengal minister and former cricketer Laxmi Ratan Shukla and TMC MP Sunil Mondal have also resigned from Mamata Banerjee’s government but have not yet joined the BJP camp.
