At the fag end of January this year, when a teary-eyed Trinamool Congress minister for a decade, Rajib Banerjee, walked past gate no. 2 of the West Bengal Assembly House to submit his resignation, holding a Mamata Banerjee portrait tightly to his chest, little did most political observers know then that the same portrait would pave the way for the prodigal son’s return to the party some nine months later.
“Quitting Trinamool and joining the BJP was a mistake. It was a mistake that I made on account of some specific circumstances around my political life at that time and some misunderstandings with a section of party leaders. I have corrected that error,” Banerjee told News18 after he landed in Kolkata from Agartala where, atop a public meeting dais, he accepted the Trinamool Congress flag from party’s national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee on Sunday.
On the evening of January 31, 2021, Rajib Banerjee and three other Trinamool turncoats – Prabir Ghoshal, Baishali Dalmiya and Rathin Chakraborty – boarded a special chartered flight from Kolkata and joined the BJP in the presence of home minister Amit Shah in Delhi. He later contested the state polls from his home turf in Domjur, Howrah, and lost to Trinamool’s Kalyan Ghosh by over 42,000 votes.
Although Rajib Banerjee had been singing in discordant notes and opposing the BJP’s political policies on social media platforms while avoiding party proximity ever since, a section of the TMC leadership from Howrah and neighbouring Hooghly districts had been consistent in their opposition to the leader who had, obviously, suffered trust issues in his former party.
Leading the Rajib-opposition pack was TMC MP Kalyan Banerjee. On Sunday, after Rajib rejoined the party, Kalyan was far from happy. Reiterating his “corruption” jibe on the returned leader the Serampore MP went on record stating that “only the top leadership can tell why a top-to-bottom corrupt leader like him was included back in the party”.
It’s on this sticky wicket that Rajib seems to have turned to his party supremo whose portrait he carried at the time of submitting his resignation from the state assembly. “It’s Mamata Banerjee who decided I should come back to the party. And although Kalyan Banerjee is entitled to his own opinions, he should ask our leader this question directly,” Rajib told News18.
“I will, however, make every attempt to mend my relationship with Kalyan Banerjee and others who are opposing me,” he added, smiling.
Asked whether it would be safe to presume that he would, henceforth, be playing a leading role in building the party in Tripura in the run-up to the 2023 state polls, Banerjee said, “I will play whatever role my leader wants me to play. But, yes, Tripura is familiar turf for me and I do have a long-standing relationship with that state.”
Stating that he was “happy and relieved” to be back in Trinamool Congress, Banerjee said he “changed his decision” to continue in the BJP because he was “quickly disillusioned by the party’s divisive politics”.
BJP leader Dilip Ghosh said on Sunday that the party was in the process of “weeding out more traitors who are likely to jump ship”.
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