KOLKATA 15 JUNE: With the exit of Mukul Roy from BJP to TMC and the prospect of more of its ilk looming large, BJP seems to be worried about a major split in its legislature party.
In 2016, the Bharatiya Janata Party had won 77 seats in Bengal from three seats. Two BJP Lok Sabha MPs – Nishith Pramanik, MP from Ranaghat and Jagannath Sarkar, another MP from Coochbehar tendered their resignation a month ago.
Soon after Mukul Roy switched his allegiance to TMC, Subhendu Adhikari at a press meet in West Bengal Assembly said that he would see to it that the anti-defection law was implemented in the state.
On Monday at Raj Bhavan, Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar said that he would see to it that anti-defection law comes into force in the state.
According to Adhikari, since Roy switched his allegiance to BJP, he claimed that he will ensure that the law will be implemented in the state, no matter what it took. Roy did not resign while changing camps.
A total of 23 BJP MLAs out of 74, who was supposed to be present alongside Suvendu Adhikari, the Leader of Opposition in West Bengal Assembly, on Monday to Raj Bhavan, did not turn up for the same.
It is believed that among the ones who chose to not attend the meeting, many of those legislators are known for their closeness to Mukul Roy.
Moreover, the defection in West Bengal politics will be a rare phenomenon as although many leaders switched camps in various years, anti-defection law has not been implemented. The Left and the congress which was the principal rivals for the first five decades of Independence, never poached leaders from each other. But defections emerged as a dominant political component after the fall of the four-year-old Congress-TMC alliance in September 2012 with the TMC withdrawing from Congress.
The first defections from Congress happened in November 2012 with Krishnendu Narayan Chowdhury of the English Baazar constituency in the Malda district and Humayun Kabir of Rejinagar in Murshidabad joining the TMC.
Both the leaders have rewarded a place in the cabinet and both of them resigned from the Assembly to contest by-elections on the TMC ticket. Chowdhury won and continued with his ministerial stint while Kabir lost and had to resign from the cabinet. Between 2014-2016 14 legislators defected from Congress and switched over to TMC. Defections continued in the second term of the Mamata cabinet too.
What TMC say
According to TMC leaders, Adhikari should first ask his father to resign from the Kanthi Lok Sabha seat. The TMC leader Sudip Bandhyopadhyay has already written twice to Lok Sabha speaker Om Birla seeking the disqualification of SisirAdhikari and Burdwan east MP Sunil Mondal.
Partha Chatterjee, TMC general secretary, said, “The disqualification of these two leaders will result in a by-election within six months and the BJP cannot be too hopeful of winning these two Lok Sabha seats.”
What Political Analysts say
According to senior political analysts, although defection is not new, the interesting part now is that after the exit of Roy, BJP now is giving pressure to implement the anti-defection law as they feel that after Roy’s exit more leaders are going to exit from BJP.
Biswanath Chowdhury, senior political analysts, said, “It needs to be seen whether anti-defection law will be implemented in the state or not. But the acrimony between TMC and BJP is surely going to increase in the next few months as BJP is desperate to implement the law and TMC leaders are questioning why two senior leaders who joined BJP from TMC has not yet resigned and fought the by-election.”
The Tenth Schedule of the constitution, which is popularly referred toas the anti-defection law, says, under the heading of “disqualification on ground of defection”, that a member of a house belonging to any political party shall be disqualified if he or she has a) voluntarily given up membership of such political party, or (b) votes or abstains from voting in such House contrary to any direction issued by the political party to which he belongs.