West Bengal BJP MP Arjun Singh returns to Trinamool after three years with saffron party

Arjun Singh, the BJP MP from Barrackpore, who returned to the Trinamool Congress on May 22.

Three years after leaving the Trinamool Congress to join the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Arjun Singh, the Lok Sabha MP from Barrackpore, returned to the Trinamool on May 22, ending months of political speculation.

A four-time Trinamool member of the Legislative Assembly from Bhatpara, Arjun Singh quit the party on March 14, 2019, after he was denied a ticket to contest in the Lok Sabha election that year.

Among the first of major Trinamool leaders to defect to the BJP in the run-up to the 2021 Assembly election, he joins a long list of leaders who have gone back to the Trinamool following the BJP’s defeat in that election.

Accusing the BJP of being a party that has been “reduced to doing politics on Facebook from air-conditioned rooms”, Arjun Singh told mediapersons after returning to the Trinamool: “I have returned home. I have been associated with the party since its foundation in 1998.”

According to Trinamool sources, not everyone within the ruling party, particularly at the ground level in the Barrackpore region, is too happy to see Arjun Singh back. A source said: “The genuine Trinamool workers would never have left the party, but Arjun Singh did. Now he is back, because the leadership accepted him.”