Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and well-known actor Mithun Chakraborty on Wednesday said that 38 MLAs of the Trinamool Congress are in touch with the BJP and 21 are in direct touch with him.
“Let me give you breaking news…At this moment, 38 Trinamool MLAs are in touch with us. Among them, 21 are in direct contact with me,” Mr. Chakraborty said addressing a media person at a BJP party office in Kolkata.
The remarks by the actor turned BJP leader come at a time when the Trinamool is facing the heat over the West Bengal School Service Commission recruitment scam. When asked about the State’s Industries and Commerce Minister Partha Chatterjee’s arrest in the scam, Mr. Chakraborty said that anyone who has committed a crime will not be spared.
Of late, Mithun Chakraborty has been holding press conferences in Kolkata after remaining silent for a year after the 2021 Assembly polls. He was a star campaigner of the BJP in 2021 in which the Trinamool came to a third term with a resounding victory.
Reacting to the BJP leader’s comment, Trinamool spokesperson Kunal Ghosh dismissed the speculations. “Mithun Chakraborty is used to recalling dialogues from his flop films. This might be the same case. There is nothing serious in this,” Mr. Ghosh said.
While the rebellion in the Shiv Sena has led to Uddhav Thackeray losing power in Maharashtra, in West Bengal it has been the BJP which has been losing elected representatives as they defected to Trinamool Congress. From 77 MLAs who won the Assembly polls in 2021, the number of BJP MLAs has dropped to 70 now. Two BJP MPs Babul Supriyo and Arjun Singh have also joined Trinamool in the past year.
