Three left MLAs from Bengal join Trinamool Congress

KOLKATA: Three Left Front MLAs who had cast their ballots during the Rajya Sabha elections on Friday in favour of Trinamool Congress, have joined the ruling Trinamool Congress on Saturday. Anantadeb Adhikary and Dasarath Tirkey of the RSP had ignored the Left parties plea to support their candidate for the Rajya Sabha polls---A.S.Maliha Badi and cast their votes for Trinamool Congress nominee Ahamed Hassan. Another Forward Bloc MLA Sunil Mandal had also supported Hassan during Friday's elections. The trio have joined Trinamool Congress at a function held at the ruling party's headquarters on E.M Bypass.

Trinamool Congress all-India general secretary Mukul Roy hinted on Saturday that many more Left MLAs had shown their keen interest to join Trinamool and "you will see many Left MLAs are coming to our side before Lok Sabha elections. These Left MLAs have lost faith on their leadership and are now interested to join Mamata Banerjee who is carrying out massive development for the state."

The two Left parties---RSP and Forward Bloc are genuinely disturbed at the decision taken by their MLAs to quit the Left Front to join Mamata brigade. "We will expel both our MLAs who have joined Trinamool Congress. We will write to the Assembly speaker Biman Banerjee to terminate their membership from the state legislature," RSP central secretariat member Manoj Bhattacharjee told ET on Saturday. The Bloc too, is contamplating similar action against their MLA who on Saturday joined Trinamool.

Even though a number of Congress MLAs who won 2011 Assembly elections, have already joined Trinamool Congress, this is for the first time that three Left Front MLAs betrayed their respective mother parties to join the ruling Trinamool Congress. Two Congress MLAs---Sushil Roy and Imani Biswas had also cast their ballots in favour of Trinamool Congress candidate Hassan on Friday, but they are yet to join the ruling party.

Three Congress MLAs---Krishnendu Narayan Chowdhury, Humayun Kabir and Ajoy De have left Congress and joined Trinamool Congress after the last Assembly polls. If the two Congress MLAs--Roy and Biswas who had voted for Trinamool on Friday, join Trinamool, the Congress camp in the state will certainly face with a very tough situation before this year's parliamentary elections.