State minister of forest affairs, Rajib Banerjee said that his circumstance in the Trinamool Congress (TMC) was not equivalent to that of Suvendu Adhikari. While Adhikari joined BJP, Banerjee, who had likewise criticized the TMC as of late, met senior party leader Partha Chatterjee.

Surprisingly, four ministers were missing from a cabinet meeting called by Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday, raising doubts over the possibility of yet more Trinamool leaders switching political camps ahead of next year’s Assembly election. Partha Chatterjee, the Secretary-General of the TMC, said that out of the four, three offered perfectly valid explanations. Rajib Banerjee, the fourth, remained incommunicado till late in the evening.

Among various rebels and disgruntled leaders like Adhikari in TMC, Kanishka Panda was expelled from the party for anti-party activities. Panda was secretary of the TMC unit in the East Midnapore area where the Adhikari family represents two Lok Sabha seats, an assembly seat, and heads an urban body. TMC secretary-general Partha Chatterjee and election strategist Prashant Kishor had held a 60 minutes meeting with the forest minister Banerjee at Chatterjee’s residence at Naktala in south Kolkata. While Chatterjee stayed quiet about the meeting, Banerjee asserted that the discussions covered “political strategy.”

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Leaders close to the minister, however, said that he raised issues, for example, corruption and nepotism by certain leaders in the Howrah area, where Banerjee represents the Domjur assembly seat while conversing with Chatterjee and Kishor.

Rajib Banerjee said, “I attended the meeting as a party worker. We examined procedure for the coming days. I cannot impart much else to the media. In a gathering, there can be disappointed individuals and there can be individuals who are over-satisfied. These things are figured out through discussion. I will be accessible on the off chance that I am called for additional discussions.” The forest minister further added, “My case is not equivalent to that of Suvendu Adhikari. We are two separate people and we have separate perspectives. Our circumstances cannot be analyzed or compared.”

Banners supporting Rajib Banerjee and Adhikari have been showing up across West Bengal, including Kolkata, since last month, stoking speculation that the two famous and comparatively younger leaders, may leave the TMC. Eventually, Adhikari did leave TMC and joined BJP which further triggered the speculation about the future of Rajib Banerjee in TMC. In this regard, posters with pictures of Banerjee and the words, “symbol of honesty ” written in Bengali, showed up in Howrah.

Also see: Battleground of Bengal election 2021

Making things tough for the party, Mihir Goswami, the legislator from the Cooch Behar South constituency in north Bengal, recently joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) while Shilbhadra Datta, TMC MLA from Barrackpore assembly constituency  in North 24 Parganas, has tendered his resignation from the party and switched over to BJP. Goswami and Dutta had recently spoken in public against deploying I-PAC, Kishor’s organization, and working on its recommendations. Senior TMC leaders had revealed a month ago that Adhikari was explicitly discontent with organizational decision taken by Mamata Banerjee’s nephew Abhishek Banerjee and Kishor, who was roped in after the BJP won 18 of the state’s 42 Lok Sabha seats in 2019.