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Once a reviled observe in West Bengal, the ‘Aaya Ram Gaya Ram’ tradition of incessantly altering political allegiance has taken centrestage in the state forward of the meeting elections due in April-May subsequent yr. The state’s politicians, until the earlier decade, ridiculed the tradition of switching sides on the drop of a hat.
However, for the reason that TMC’s ascendance to energy in 2011, lawmakers of the Congress and Left events becoming a member of the ruling social gathering to be an element of the “development process initiated by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee” had grow to be a typical observe until the opposite day. The ruling social gathering, nevertheless, is now getting a dose of its personal medication with a number of of its leaders becoming a member of the BJP.
The saffron social gathering has engineered an exodus of TMC leaders, with social gathering heavyweight Suvendu Adhikari and 15 different MLAs and an MP, becoming a member of the BJP for the reason that 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The TMC witnessed the most important desertion from the social gathering on a single day when Adhikari, a former state minister, together with 34 different leaders, together with 5 MLAs and an MP, joined the BJP throughout Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s rally at Medinipur on Saturday.
In what’s being seen as a political retort, the TMC inducted Sujata Mondal Khan, the spouse of BJYM state chief and Bishnupur MP Soumitra Khan, from the BJP on Monday. Bimal Gurung’s Gorkha Janmukti Morcha, the BJP’s ally in Darjeeling hills for over a decade, additionally switched allegiance and vowed to again the TMC in the forthcoming elections.
A senior TMC chief, on situation of anonymity, mentioned the social gathering mustn’t have pursued the “immoral” ‘Aaya Ram Gaya Ram’ tradition, coined after Haryana legislator Gaya Lal who modified his social gathering thrice inside a fortnight in 1967. “It was wrong on our party to induct so many lawmakers from the Congress and the Left. It was immoral politics on our part and we should have refrained from doing it.
“Sometimes, to extend your help base, you must take choices which could have an effect on you in the long term,” he said. Political desertions were rare in West Bengal, where ideological convictions identify politicians.
The first instance of defection can be traced back to 1952 when four Forward Bloc MLAs joined the Congress after the first West Bengal assembly elections. They resigned from their posts, leading to by-elections. However, the first major defection took place 15 years later in 1967 when Congress leader and former chief minister Prafulla Chandra Ghosh walked out of the Bangla Congress and CPI (M)-led United Front government with 17 MLAs and joined the Progressive Democratic Front (PDF). This led to the collapse of the United Front government.
After the 1970s, however, no major defection or switching of political allegiance took place till 1998, when a section of Congress leaders led by Mamata Banerjee formed the Trinamool Congress. Between 1998 and 2001, several Congress MLAs who had joined the newly floated TMC obeyed the grand old party’s whip inside the Assembly to avoid getting disqualified under the Anti-Defection Law but functioned as TMC leader outside the House.
After 2011, however, the state witnessed massive defections as not only Congress and Left legislators, but even other elected representatives switched allegiance, as a result of which entire opposition-held zilla parishads and municipalities came under the TMC’s control. From 2011-16, 17 Congress MLAs and six Left legislators joined the TMC, while three opposition-held zilla parishads and several municipalities came under its control.
Eighteen Congress MLAs and an MP and four Left MLAs have joined the TMC since 2016. Barring those resigning from their posts to contest the Lok Sabha elections, other turncoat legislators did not quit their posts.
The trend changed after the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, in which the BJP bagged 18 seats, only four less than the TMC’s tally of 22. Fifteen TMC MLAs, one MP, three CPI (M) and two Congress legislators joined the saffron party. They too did not resign from their posts.
Sources in the TMC and the BJP said that both parties are likely to witness many more defections in the run-up to the elections. Although the TMC has cried foul over the poaching of its MLAs and branded the turncoats as “traitors”, opposition parties and political observers felt that the party was paid back in its own coin.
“The TMC is getting a dose of its personal medication. The means it negated individuals’s verdict and inducted MLAs with out making them resign from their posts has come to hang-out the social gathering,” political analyst Suman Bhattacharya said. Although a section of TMC leaders agreed, party MP Sukhendu Sekhar Roy said that no party is free from the malaise of ‘Aaya Ram Gaya Ram’ culture as it is a “actuality” of Indian politics.
He also accused the BJP of threatening TMC MLAs. “It is a political malaise from which none of the events in the nation is free. So, why single out TMC? But what the BJP is doing in the title of defection is unacceptable. They are threatening and luring our MLAs into their social gathering,” he said.
Mocking the TMC over the culture of defection, BJP state chief Dilip Ghosh said the party should be the last to talk about it. “The TMC needs to be the final political outfit to speak about defections. In the final 10 years, the TMC has engineered defections of greater than 40 MLAs through the use of each cash and muscle energy. Was that based on democratic norms? The TMC ought to first reply it after which lecture us,” he said.
Opposition Congress and the Left Front, which have been the biggest casualties of switching of sides since 2011, blamed the TMC for importing the “tradition of defections” to the state. “The TMC has murdered democracy in West Bengal and now they’re getting payback. They had thought that by ending off the Congress and the Left Front by defections, they’ll be capable of rule the state for a lot of extra years.
“Before pointing fingers at others, the TMC leadership should look at the mirror,” Leader of the Opposition and senior Congress chief Abdul Mannan mentioned. Senior CPI (M) chief Sujan Chakraborty mentioned the TMC and the BJP are “two sides of a coin” and the saffron social gathering is simply following the “undemocratic footsteps” of the ruling social gathering in the state.
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