'Betrayed by TMC': Barrackpore MP Arjun Singh says will return to BJP

Days after being denied a ticket, TMC's Arjun Singh on Thursday said he would return to the BJP. Singh is the sitting MP from Barrackpore, which he won in 2019 as BJP candidate. He, however, left the BJP to join TMC in 2022. However, the TMC recently announced candidates for all 42 sears but did not re-nominate him from Barrackpore and fielded Partha Bhowmick.

"When I joined the Trinamool Congress in 2022, I was promised that I would be re-nominated as the TMC's candidate from the Barrackpore Lok Sabha seat. But the party did not keep its promise and betrayed me. So, I have decided to return to the BJP," he said. Singh also claimed that a "top TMC leader" would join the saffron party along with him. 

The BJP has so far announced candidates for 19 of 42 Lok Sabha seats but a candidate for Barrackpore is yet to be declared. 

Arjun Singh had quit the BJP and rejoined TMC after being elected from the seat in West Bengal's North 24 Parganas district in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. He had earlier quit the Trinamool Congress ahead of the previous Lok Sabha elections. In 2022, he returned to the TMC but did not resign as MP.

While Singh has announced he would return to the BJP, some senior leaders within the saffron party have cautioned the party not to open the door for every leader.

Former BJP leader Tathagata Roy said after TMC denied him a ticket, there are chances Arjun Singh might approach BJP again. "Arjun Singh, mafioso of the industrial belt of North 24-Parganas distt, had left TMC and joined BJP. He got a ticket by courtesy of KDSA 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. @AmitShahOffice," Tathagata Roy said in a post on X.

BJP MP Swapan Dasgupta, too, said that 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."