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Suvendu Adhikari to join BJP in presence of Amit Shah on December 19: Report

Reportedly, Suvendu Adhikari, a TMC MLA from Nandigram, will resign from the post on December 18, a day before Amit Shah sets foot on West Bengal.

Suvendu Adhikari to join BJP in presence of Amit Shah on December 19: Report

Suvendu Adhikari (file image)

Rebel Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader Suvendu Adhikari is likely to join BJP in the presence of Amit Shah, who is all set to visit West Bengal for a two-day tour later this week.

According to CNN News18, Adhikari, a TMC MLA from Nandigram, will resign from the post on December 18, a day before Shah is likely to step in the poll-bound eastern Indian state.

Even though the “deal is done”, the news channel informed that Adhikari might travel to New Delhi on Thursday for “a final round of talks” with BJP’s central leadership before putting on his papers as a TMC legislator.

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Adhikari has been a hotshot political property in West Bengal ever since he started a rebellion against his own party.

He had been expressing his disenchantment with TMC with indirect jibes at “apolitical” meetings and rallies for some time now.

One of the architects of TMC’s Nandigram revolution, Adhikari, 49, is still a major force of the party’s ground-level organisation in the state.

Suvendu’s departure will, in all likelihood, be fateful for West Bengal’s governning party in next year’s assembly polls the in Midnapore belt.

However, as has been the norm with TMC, Mamata Banerjee never allowed him to come near her in terms of matching the political aura.

Instead of giving him a senior leadership role, the party reportedly tried to keep Adhikari in check ever since the reports of his despondency started to emerge.

The Mamata Banerjee-led party had failed to appease the strongman leader, despite an “ice-breaking” meeting between him, Abhishek Banerjee and Prashant Kishor.

Following the failure of that meeting, TMC had also given up on its once-heavyweight youth leader and “closed the doors” for him. “Now, if Suvendu Adhikari changes his mind, it’s up to him and he will inform what he intends to do,” Dum Dum MP Saugata Roy had said earlier this month.

Hinting at his possible exit from the party, Adhikari, the former youth Secretary of TMC, has already resigned from the West Bengal cabinet, as the Minister of Transport, Irrigation and Water Resource, and other portfolios that he held.

After the meeting with Abhishek Banerjee and Prashant Kishor, Adhikari had made his intentions clear with a text message to party veteran Saugata Roy saying “Forgive me, it won’t be possible for me to continue”.

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