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News Desk: In the wake of the reversal in the recently-concluded West Bengal assembly polls, a string of turncoats have expressed regret at having jumped ship to the BJP and want to return to the ruling Trinamool Congress. In the latest, a group of BJP workers in the state’s Birbhum district very publicly apologized for joining the saffron party.
Marching into their village’s local market on Tuesday, the BJP cadres announced that they now wish to join TMC. One BJP worker, who led the march of party supporters, was seen addressing the locals over a microphone. “We have made a mistake by joining the BJP, we maligned the local panchayat falsely. Now we want to work with the TMC,” the party worker announced.
The district BJP leadership has alleged that their workers were living in fear and thus forced to tender such a public apology.
Dhruba Saha, Birbhum district president, BJP, said, “This is a shame for democracy. People’s democratic rights have been snatched. Our ground level workers are living in fear. Thus they were being forced to do such things.”
Saha was referring to the widespread incidents of post-poll violence in West Bengal, in which TMC workers allegedly attacked BJP supporters. The state government has refuted the charges of large-scale violence and hit out at the BJP for politicizing the incidents where, it has said, TMC workers have also lost lives.
Despite the sporadic reports of clashes between cadres of the two political parties, several former TMC leaders, who had joined the BJP in the run-up to the assembly elections, have either directly or indirectly conveyed their desire to rejoin the Mamata Banerjee-led party. Prominent among these are Dipendu Biswas and Sonali Guha, who wrote to Didi begging her forgiveness and expressed their wish to return to the fold. Both had hitched their wagons to the BJP after being denied tickets to contest the election by the TMC.
