Former Trinamool Congress Rajya Sabha MPs Sushmita Dev, Sukhendu Sekhar Rai and Prakash Shek Barak joined the BJP in Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal, on Thursday.
The three leaders were inducted into the party in the presence of BJP state president Samik Bhattacharya.
Bhattacharya welcomed the former MPs by presenting them with BJP flags during a program attended by senior state leaders at the party’s office in Salt Lake.
Dev, Rai and Parekh had resigned from the Rajya Sabha and quit the Trinamool Congress last month after the party’s defeat in the West Bengal Assembly elections. Roy and Barrick’s term was scheduled to last until September 2029, while Dave’s term was scheduled to last until April 2030.
By-elections for the three seats are scheduled to be held on July 24, and the BJP is expected to win all three seats.
Bhattacharya said the experience of the three former parliamentarians will further strengthen the party in the state.
The Rajya Sabha account has been changed
After the 2026 West Bengal Assembly elections, the BJP emerged as the dominant force in the 294-member House with 208 seats, while the TMC won 80 seats. The Congress and the Aam Janata Unnayan Party (AJUP) won two seats each, while the Communist Party of India (Maoist) and the Indian Secular Front (ISF) won one seat each.
The subsequent resignations reduced the strength of the BJP to 207 seats and the RJD to one, leaving the ruling party with a comfortable majority and the opposition camp with 85 legislators.
Under normal circumstances, the opposition’s combined strength would have been enough to secure one Rajya Sabha seat, with the BJP bagging the remaining two seats.
However, the political equation changed dramatically after the TMC split into two rival camps led by former Prime Minister and TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee and opposition leader Ritabrata Banerjee.
As per the current alliance, around 65 MLAs are with Ritabrata’s camp while around 15 legislators continue to support Mamata Banerjee’s camp.
This division has radically changed the calculus of the Rajya Sabha elections.
Under the electoral formula governing the three-seat bypoll, a candidate would need about 70 first-preference votes to secure the election. While the BJP’s 207 MLAs allow it to comfortably distribute votes among three candidates and perhaps secure about 69 votes each, neither faction of the TMC, on its own, has the numbers needed to elect a member.
“In the current situation, the split in the opposition has turned what would normally have been a two-man contest into a situation where the BJP can realistically target all three seats,” a senior political analyst told PTI.
