Two sitting parliamentarians from the Trinamool Congress -- Barrackpur MP Arjun Singh and Tamluk MP Dibyendu Adhikari -- joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday. Singh, who had earlier joined the BJP in 2019 after quitting TMC and defeated the then-TMC candidate on the Barrackpore seat, returned to TMC again in 2022 even as he remained a BJP MP on Parliament record. He announced that he was leaving the TMC days after being dropped from the TMC's list of candidates for the Lok Sabha polls.
Singh and Adhikari joined the BJP at its headquarters in Delhi in the presence of party national general secretary Dushyant Gautam and West Bengal co-incharge Amit Malviya. Adhikari is the brother of West Bengal BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari.
After rejoining the BJP, Arjun Singh expressed his reasons, stating, "I became an MP in 2019 (from BJP) and in 2021...after post-poll violence, I had to keep my distance from the BJP to save the party workers. They were being murdered...I saw that the TMC government wants to just stay in power with the help of Police and goons. We saw its most recent example in Sandeshkhali. There is not just one Sandeskhali, people in the border areas of Bengal are living like those in Sandeshkhali."
In response, TMC spokesperson Shantanu Sen commented on the MPs joining the BJP, saying, "Arjun Singh was a BJP MP before joining TMC, and now he went back to join them, what's the big deal in this? Coming to Dibyendu, he was married to TMC but had an extra-marital affair with BJP since long."
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