BJP MP claims 50 TMC MLAs, 20 MPs poised to defect amid Bengal party turmoil

On Wednesday, BJP MP Saumitra Khan stood in Bankura and made a sweeping claim: roughly fifty Trinamool legislators and twenty members of Parliament were unhappy with their party and ready to cross over to the BJP if the national leadership gave permission. Khan went further, suggesting that if the BJP's central command decided to absorb these defectors, the Trinamool Congress would effectively cease to exist as a political force. "If the BJP central leadership says it once, TMC will not remain a party anymore," he declared. "Everyone is ready to come. Around 50 MLAs are unhappy with the party and 20 MPs are ready to join."

Khan's remarks carried particular sting because they arrived alongside a personal attack on Abhishek Banerjee, the Trinamool's national general secretary. Khan called him a "sinner" deserving of jail time, and made pointed reference to a bulldozer positioned outside Banerjee's residence—a reference to the demolitions Banerjee had allegedly ordered against BJP workers' homes in 2021. The language was sharp and deliberate, designed to wound and to signal that the BJP saw an opening. Trinamool MP Sougata Roy quickly denied everything, calling Khan's claims "completely false" and accusing the BJP of spreading misinformation.

But Khan's words landed in soil already churned by genuine turbulence. The Trinamool Congress, which has governed West Bengal, was reeling from an electoral setback and facing a cascade of internal crises that no amount of denial could wish away. Nearly one hundred municipal councillors had resigned in recent weeks, draining civic bodies that the party still nominally controlled. Corruption allegations were mounting. Resignations were accelerating. The party's machinery was visibly fraying.

The unraveling became most visible in the municipalities. In Bhatpara, thirty of thirty-five councillors—including the chairperson, Reba Raha—walked away. In Halisahar, sixteen of twenty-three left. Kanchrapara lost fourteen councillors. These were not symbolic departures; they threatened to collapse the municipal governments themselves before civic elections scheduled for the following year. Debajyoti Ghosh, the vice-chairperson of Bhatpara, explained his resignation plainly: employees were not being paid, and the Trinamool leadership had abandoned them. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had appealed to councillors to stay, but the appeal went unheeded.

The pressure intensified when the BJP-led state administration, now under opposition leader Suvendu Adhikari's influence, signaled that past municipal activities would be audited and irregularities punished. Urban Development Minister Agnimitra Paul announced that administrators would be appointed to municipalities where councillors had stopped showing up. Simultaneously, arrests began. Three councillors were arrested on extortion and intimidation charges. A prominent South Dum Dum councillor named Sanjay Das, who had faced corruption allegations and was close to Trinamool leader Debraj Chakraborty, was found hanging on May 23; police registered a case of unnatural death. Chakraborty himself was under investigation by central agencies over alleged irregularities in civic recruitment. Former Trinamool minister Sujit Bose had already been arrested by the Enforcement Directorate in connection with the same case.

The political mathematics of Khan's claim carried real weight. West Bengal sends forty-two members to Parliament. In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the Trinamool had won twenty-nine seats while the BJP secured twelve and Congress one. If Khan's assertion that twenty MPs were ready to defect held any truth, those numbers would matter: under India's anti-defection law, a group needs at least one-third of a party's parliamentary strength to switch without facing disqualification. Twenty MPs from a party of twenty-nine would clear that threshold. The claim, however unverified, was not merely bombast—it was a threat calibrated to the law.

The Trinamool's troubles had deepened after Barasat MP Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar attended a meeting led by opposition leader Suvendu Adhikari, accompanied by several Trinamool MLAs. Kakoli had recently been removed as the party's chief whip in the Lok Sabha and subsequently granted Y-category security by the central government, a move that fueled speculation about her political future and the party's internal fractures. Each resignation, each arrest, each defection rumor seemed to feed the next, creating a spiral of instability that the party's leadership struggled to contain. The question now was whether Khan's claim represented genuine intelligence about imminent defections or merely opportunistic pressure designed to accelerate them.