Is Arjun Singh rejoining Trinamool Congress?
Rumours were already doing the rounds—now those just got louder. Is Arjun Singh returning to Trinamool Congress?
In Kankinara on Wednesday, the BJP MP was seen marching in step with the Trinamool MLA from Jagatdal, Somenath Shyam Ichini in a religious procession, en route to inaugurate a temple. Though both of them made light of the situation, marking their meeting down to merely a coincidence, the rumours just got a fresh lease of life: Is this then the way to the former Trinamool leader’s rejoining his former party?
On March 14, 2019, Arjun Singh had left Trinamool Congress to join the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Later that year, he fought the Lok Sabha election on a ticket from the saffron party and won.
In recent days, though, he has been seen protesting vehemently against the Union government’s lackadaisical attitude towards the jute industry of Bengal and other states, demanding fixing the price of raw jute, making mandatory the packaging of food grains and sugar in jute bags and implementing of the tariff commission’s report. He said he could not tolerate this as he had cut his teeth in politics as a leader of jute mill workers and would never abandon them.
He said his multiple letters to Union Textiles Minister Piyush Goyal has not borne any fruit, and even threatened to join the protest of the Trinamool Congress Chairperson and Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. He even wrote letters to the chief ministers of the jute-growing states of Bengal, Bihar, Assam and Tripura concerning the current situation. By his own admission, however, he is yet to get any response.
Though the BJP-led Union government held a tripartite meeting in New Delhi on May 9, calling on the Indian Jute Mills Association and the Bengal government’s jute representative, Singh was not called. On the afternoon of that day, in a press conference, he poured his heart out on what he felt was wilful disregard of him by his party. But immediately after that, he apparently changed his mind and tweeted: “… the meeting was very positive. Textile Secretary will speak to Union Minister@Piyush Goyal on these issues.”
However, Arjun Singh’s march on Wednesday with the Trinamool Congress MLA just added fuel to the circulating rumours of him coming back to the Trinamool’s fold.
