Kolkata: In a major setback to Congress, the party's women's wing president Sushmita Dev resigned from the primary membership on Monday. Dev soon joined the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in the presence of the party's national general secretary and CM Mamata Banerjee's nephew Abhishek Banerjee.
According to sources, All India Mahila Congress president Sushmita had sent her resignation to party chief Sonia Gandhi on August 15. She had been a Lok Sabha member from Silchar in Assam, which was earlier represented by her father, the late Santosh Mohan Dev.
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Just last week, Sushmita Dev and the new Assam Congress team visited Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi. She also met Rahul Gandhi at the Delhi airport when he returned from Srinagar.
Sources said that after joining Trinamool, Sushmita may now become the party's Tripura in-charge, with assembly elections due in the state next year. Here, the TMC is using all its might. Sushmita's father Santosh Mohan Dev, a Bengali who hailed from the state of Assam, had won the Lok Sabha elections twice from Tripura West seat. He had also won five times from Assam's Silchar seat.
Sushmita Dev was furious with the party's seat-sharing in the alliance with the AIUDF during the Assam assembly elections this year, and had threatened to quit the party.
After joining the TMC, the former MP thanked party chief Mamata Banerjee in a tweet and said: "Will give it all I have got…" She signed off with "#KhelaHobe".
Sushmita will address the media in New Delhi on Tuesday, she said in a video message tweeted by the TMC.