IN YET another jolt to the BJP, the party’s Alipurduar district president, Ganga Prasad Sharma, joined the TMC on Monday, as senior leader of the state’s ruling party Mukul Roy, who also switched sides two weeks ago, claimed that this was the “beginning of the saffron party’s end” in the State. Seven other BJP leaders from the region, too, followed in Sharma’s footsteps and joined the Mamata Banerjee camp. Roy, addressing a press meet here, said the BJP’s rise in the state began with the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, when it managed to bag several seats in north Bengal, and its downfall, too, will start from the region.

 

“This is just a glimpse of what lies ahead... The BJP’s fall in the state is imminent,” Roy, who was the party’s national vice president until recently, underlined. Asked what he might have to say about BJP MLA Suvendu Adhikari’s insistence that he quit as an MLA, having won the Krishnanagar Uttar assembly seat on a saffron camp ticket, Roy said, “He should first find out what his father (Sisir Adhikari) was up to.” Roy was referring to the TMC’s demand for disqualification of Kanthi MP Sisir Adhikari, who crossed over to the BJP, much like his son, ahead of the polls.