Arjun Singh to quit TMC? Barrackpore MP welcomes CAA, says Bengal LS result will be a repeat of 2019

TMC's Barrackpore MP Arjun Singh on Tuesday welcomed the implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and said the Lok Sabha results in West Bengal will be a repeat of 2019. 

In the 2019 Parliamentary elections, the BJP had surprised many by bagging 18 of 42 seats with nearly 41 votes. The TMC, the dominant party in the state, had won 22 with 43 per cent votes. 

In 2019, Arjun Singh joined the BJP from TMC and won the Barrackpore seat for the saffron party. He, however, left the BJP in 2022 and returned to TMC. 

The TMC recently announced candidates for all 42 seats but denied a ticket for Arjun Singh from Barrackpore. The party said those dropped from the parliamentary elections will be accommodated in the assembly elections.   

However, Arjun Singh, who is considered a strongman, has hinted that he may not contest assembly elections. When asked whether he will contest the parliament elections, Singh said: "Only time will tell whether or not will contest (in Lok Sabha polls)."

The TMC leader called CAA a historic move by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. "I am happy that CAA is being implemented," he said.

Former BJP leader Tathagata Roy recently cautioned the party from inducting Arjun Singh again. He called Arjun Singh a mafioso of the industrial belt of North 24-Parganas district. "He got a ticket by courtesy of KDSA (Kailash Vijayvargiya, Dilip Ghosh, Shiv Prakash, Arvind Menon) gang, won and promptly went back to TMC. This time TMC refused him a ticket. Now he will lobby BJP. My entreaty: do not touch him with a ten-foot pole," Roy said.

BJP's Swapan Dasgupta also advised that while the BJP must keep its doors open to everyone influenced by PM Modi, it is necessary to have a filter in place. (Where local units have made mistakes, weed out the undesirables."

Interestingly, a video recently surfaced in which Arjun Singh can be heard saying that he did not work hard to win assembly seats for the BJP. He said he knew he would be back in the TMC as he was the footsoldier of Mamata Banerjee. The BJP had lost 6 of 7 assembly segments under the Barrackpore seat.