Big blow to BJP in West Bengal, MP Arjun Singh rejoins Trinamool Congress

Kolkata. In a major setback to the BJP in West Bengal, party MP Arjun Singh rejoined the Trinamool Congress on Sunday. With this, the speculations about his change of side for the last two weeks also came to an end. Singh was welcomed into the Trinamool Congress by party's national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee at his office in South Kolkata.

Trinamool tweeted from its official Twitter handle, "Warmly welcome Shri Arjun Singh, former Vice President of West Bengal BJP unit and MP from Barrackpore, to the All India Trinamool Congress family. He joined us in the presence of our national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee."

After rejoining the Trinamool, Singh said he had joined the BJP in 2019 after a misunderstanding with the Trinamool leadership. He said, “But after joining the BJP, I faced hurdles in functioning independently as a Lok Sabha member elected from the state. I tried very hard to solve the issue of price of jute and there also I faced hurdles. So, I decided to join Trinamool again."

Singh is a prominent Hindi-speaking leader of the Trinamool Congress. He was a four-time Trinamool MLA from Bhatpara assembly constituency in North 24 Parganas district from 2011 to 2019. However, he was denied Lok Sabha nomination from Barrackpore Lok Sabha constituency by the Trinamool leadership in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. After that he joined BJP. The BJP fielded him as its candidate from Barrackpore Lok Sabha in 2019 and Singh had won by defeating sitting Trinamool member Dinesh Trivedi by a margin of less than 15,000 votes.