2 BJP MLAs resign within 10 days of winning the seats in West Bengal

May 13: The Bharatiya Janata Party’s seat tally in West Bengal Legislative Assembly has come down to 75 from 77, after two of its newly-elected MLAs resigned on Wednesday. Nishit Pramanik and Jagannath Sarkar were among the five BJP MPs the party fielded for the assembly polls hoping to form a government where they could play key roles. Since the BJP failed to clinch power in the state, the BJP decided to retain the duo’s membership of Parliament.

In the recently-concluded West Bengal election, Jagannath Sarkar was elected to the state Assembly from Santipur while Nisith Pramanik had won from Dinhata on BJPs ticket. It may be noted that both Sarkar and Pramanik are also Members of Parliament (from Ranaghat and Cooch Behar, respectively). “We have followed the party’s decision. The party has decided that we should resign from our Assembly seats,” Pramanik told the media after handing over his resignation.

“BJP will remain at 75 seats and will lose both these by-polls. People have been defrauded by both these MPs. Why did they contest an MLA election if they never wanted to serve as MLAs? Everyone’s time has been wasted and people will teach the BJP a lesson. TMC will win the Dinhata seat by at least 50,000 votes now,” said Udayan Guha of the Trinamool Congress. Guha represented Dinhata for a decade as the MLA before losing by 57 votes to Pramanik this time.

Following the development, the two seats of Santipur and Dinhata will now go to bypolls at a date to be decided by the Election Commission of India, but within 6 months time.

The election was won by Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress, which bagged 213 seats out of the 292 that went to polls in eight phases in March and April. The BJP had won 77 seats, but now with the resignation of these two MLAs, the strength of BJP has been reduced to 75 in West Bengal Assembly.