Rebel TMC leader and Cooch Behar MP Jagadish Chandra Barma Basunia on Monday claimed that 17 of the 20 Lok Sabha members aligned with the Nationalist Citizens Party of India will join the BJP before or after Durga Puja, a claim promptly disputed by fellow dissidents.
The BJP sought to distance itself from the claim, with its West Bengal unit chief Samik Bhattacharya saying the party would not take in anyone merely because they want to join it.
“We will not go to the BJP. We will not go to the NDA. “As far as I know, no one from the TMC or NCPI is joining the BJP. “So, an arrangement was made for us to join the NCPI.
Because of objections from Abu Taher and two other parliamentarians, earlier reporting noted: He said the initial plan was to join the BJP directly, but it could not happen. Basunia said 17 MPs have finalised plans to join the BJP together and the number would be sufficient to keep them outside the purview of the anti-defection law. Earlier reporting noted: 17 of 20 NCPI MPs to join BJP, says one of them months after leaving TMC Jagadish Chandra Barma Basunia, who was among the Lok Sabha members to defect to the little-known Nationalist Citizens Party of India (NCPI) in June after the Trinamool Congress (TMC) lost power in West Bengal, said on Monday that 17 of them will join the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) before Durga Puja in October.
However, fellow rebel MP Satabdi Roy said Basunia had made the remarks in his personal capacity, and no such decision has been taken by the group so far. Another rebel MP, Abu Taher Khan, who is also part of the NCPI group, said Basunia had no right to speak on behalf of all the MPs who had joined the outfit. This is clear,” Taher said, adding that Basunia’s statement was his personal view. The parliamentarian from the Murshidabad Lok Sabha seat said he and the two MPs could attend government meetings if invited by the prime minister or chief minister for development-related issues, but would not participate in BJP or NDA meetings. West Bengal BJP spokesperson Debjit Sarkar said he had no information about any such development and maintained that a person expressing a desire to join the BJP did not mean the party would automatically take him in. Bhattacharya said the party would not take in anyone merely because they wanted to join, and questioned whether the BJP Basunia was referring to was “the BJP on Mars”. People of the state have not forgotten the kind of atrocities these leaders and MPs have done during the TMC regime,” he said. “Now, 17 NCPI MPs [members of Parliament] will join the BJP,” said Basunia, who represents Cooch Behar in Parliament. “I have to follow what the others do.”
Earlier reporting noted: Basunia acknowledged they knew nothing about the NCPI until then.
