Around 4 pm Sunday, Singh drove to Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief Abhishek Banerjee’s Camac Street workplace. Minutes later, the TMC nationwide normal secretary prolonged “a warm welcome” to the Barrackpore MP.
Singh joined the social gathering within the presence of Banerjee and different TMC leaders, together with state minister Jyotipriya Mallick and Barrackpore MLA Raj Chakraborty, each leaders from North 24 Parganas, the district to which Singh belongs.
Singh is among the many greatest leaders to return to the TMC, which they abandoned for the BJP forward of the elections to the Lok Sabha in 2019 and the Assembly in 2021.
Within a month of the TMC’s landslide victory within the Assembly election, Mamata’s lieutenant Mukul Roy resigned from the BJP and joined his previous social gathering within the presence of the TMC management. He was adopted by Rajib Banerjee, Joyprakash Majumder, Babul Supriyo, amongst many others.
However, in accordance with a senior TMC chief, Singh’s homecoming can solely be in comparison with Mukul Roy’s in scale.
“TMC suffered the most when Mukul Roy, Arjun Singh and Shuvendu Adhikari left the party. Mukul has already returned and Arjun joined today. So, it’s a big gain for the TMC and a huge, huge setback for the BJP,” the chief stated.
Singh adopted his father Satyanarayan Singh, a identified Congress employee in Barrackpore, into politics. In 1995, Singh was elected to the Bhatpara municipality on a Congress ticket. But he stop the social gathering and joined Mamata Banerjee, when she left the Congress to arrange the TMC in 1998.
Singh’s household initially hails from Siwan of Bihar, a connection that helped him construct the TMC group within the industrial belt of North 24 Parganas, the place many of the voters are Hindi-speaking migrants from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.
In 2001, he turned TMC MLA from Bhatpara and adopted it up with three extra wins from the seat. He additionally headed the TMC’s Hindi wing and was in command of the social gathering in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and Punjab.
Left to proper : Minister Jyotipriyo Mallik, Arjun Singh, MLA Partha Bhowmik throughout a press convention after becoming a member of TMC at Camac avenue in Kolkata. (Express Photo by Partha Paul)
In March 2019, forward of the Lok Sabha elections, with the BJP seen as a rising pressure, Singh resigned as TMC MLA and joined the social gathering. His exit proved to be a setback for the TMC, which misplaced its group within the Barrackpore industrial belt and the bigger North 24 Parganas. In the elections that 12 months, Singh defeated TMC’s Dinesh Trivedi to be elected BJP MP from Barrackpore.
Seen as a ‘strongman’, Singh has a string of felony instances towards him, together with on prices of corruption, try and homicide, fraud and rioting. In 2020, a 12 months after he joined the BJP, as chairman of Bhatpara Naihati Cooperative Bank, he was accused of sanctioning loans towards pretend work orders and allegedly siphoning funds. He was later eliminated as chairman of the financial institution. The identical 12 months, he was booked in an try and homicide case after Dharmendra Singh, a TMC youth chief, was shot at in Barrackpore. Though Singh was summoned by the state CID and police in lots of of those instances, he wasnt arrested. All the instances are underneath investigation.
Over the final couple of months, Singh has been overtly important of the brand new BJP management within the state, with sources near him saying he felt sidelined underneath Sukanta Majumdar, the brand new state social gathering chief.
He has additionally been important of the Centre’s jute value coverage, saying the worth cap of Rs 6,500 per quintal imposed by the NDA authorities would have an effect on mill employees and MSMEs in Bengal.
In April, Singh shot off a letter to Union Textiles Minister Piyush Goyal, following which he had a gathering with the minister. Singh had claimed credit score when the Jute Commissioner later withdraw the worth ceiling. “After sustained pressure, the Jute Commissioner has withdrawn the price cap on raw jute. This is just a step forward in the long movement ahead. There should not be a competition for taking credit. Our sole aim & focus should be the benefits of farmers, workers and the industry,” he had tweeted.
Singh had additionally met BJP president JP Nadda, after which he stated, “Those who do not perceive something concerning the group are giving sermons. I’ve instructed Naddaji every part. Let’s see what occurs. The social gathering has given us a chair, however it would not have legs. The social gathering has given us a pen however it has no ink.”
Sources stated the U-turn on the jute value cap and the assembly with the Central management have been an try by the BJP to retain an more and more rebellious Singh within the social gathering.
But that hardly deterred Singh, who continued to hit out on the state management. On Sunday, after becoming a member of the TMC, he stated, “The BJP’s movement is only on social networking platforms. The movement can only be fought at the grassroots.”
But as information of Singh becoming a member of the TMC emerged, many identified how Mamata Banerjee was not current on the event. Also, whereas Singh joined the social gathering within the presence of Abhishek Banerjee, the TMC nationwide normal secretary was not current with Singh throughout the press convention he addressed. As a distinction, sources identified, Nadda and Union Home Minister Amit Shah have been each current when Arjun Singh joined the BJP in 2019.
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With inputs from TheIndianEXPRESS
