A day after BJP’s National Vice President Mukul Roy quit his party to return to the Trinamool Congress, another saffron party leader has triggered speculations by his possible return to the party headed by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. This was after Rajib Banerjee turned up at the residence of Trinamool Congress leader Kunal Ghosh in Kolkata. Rajib Banerjee had famously travelled to Delhi in a private jet sent by Home Minister Amit Shah to leave the Trinamool Congress and join the BJP in January this year.
Banerjee later said that ‘It was a courtesy meeting’ as he spoke to reporters. “I came for a courtesy meeting. There is no politics in this,” Banerjee said.
News agency ANI quoted him as saying, “All that I have written on Facebook, I believe in. The things I didn’t like, I wrote about them.”
Banerjee had taken to Facebook on Tuesday to warn his own party to desist from harassing the Mamata Banerjee government after losing the polls. His post in Bengali had stated that constantly harassing the government led by Banerjee with a threat to impose Article 356 in the state would not go down with the people of Bengal.
Kolkata | I came for a courtesy meeting. There is no politics in this: BJP leader Rajib Banerjee at TMC leader Kunal Ghosh’s residence pic.twitter.com/CfnSnVFKJU
— ANI (@ANI) June 12, 2021
Mukul Roy had stunned the BJP on Friday by returning to the Trinamool, where he enjoyed the status of being the most trusted lieutenant of Mamata Banerjee. The West Bengal chief minister had said that she welcomed Roy back in the party adding that the latter was being threatened by the BJP leadership.
A day later, Roy asked the ministry of home affairs headed by Amit Shah to withdraw his security cover.
Rajib Banerjee was one of the five leaders who were brought in a chartered plane from Kolkata to Delhi to join the BJP ahead of the assembly polls. Banerjee was one of the three leaders along with Mukul Roy and Shamik Bhattacharya, who had skipped a key organisational meet by the BJP in Kolkata on Tuesday last week.