Udayan Guha, Senior leader of All India Forward Bloc and MLA from Dinhata in West Bengal’s Cooch Behar district, on Thursday joined the Trinamool Congress.
The announcement of the senior left leader switching side, months before the next Assembly polls in 2016, came from TMC chairperson and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee herself.
“Udayan Guha has joined the Trinamool Congress. He is a good organiser,” Ms Banerjee said on her arrival to Kolkata from New Delhi. She said that Mr Guha will function as a secretary of the State’s ruling party.
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The development did not come as a surprise to those following the political developments in the State as Mr Guha had given ample hints of his shifting loyalties.
The MLA had resigned from the positions of AIFB and publicly criticised the functioning of senior party leaders in the State. Mr Guha had not only met the Chief Minister but heaped praises on her.
Mr Guha, is however, no exception. Over a dozen of legislatures from the Opposition, a majority of them of Congress, have switched sides and joined the State’s ruling party in the past four years in has been in power. Interestingly, Mr Guha’s decision to join TMC came only a couple of weeks after the former student leadership of AIFB expressed its dissatisfaction about the TMC. The top brass of the student leadership of the AIFB joined TMC in the summer of 2014 but ostensibly they are now willing to re-join AIFB.
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