West Bengal Polls: 2 MPs, 3 MLAs skip CM Mamata Banerjee's meet, spark speculation

With West Bengal Assembly elections around the corner, Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress seems to be shaking as two MPs and three MLAs from South 24 Parganas have given the Chief Minister's Pailan meeting a miss, News18 reported citing sources.

The TMC leaders' decision to skip the meet has sparked speculations as BJP leader and Union Home Minister Amit Shah kick-started BJP's election campaign in the state.

MPs Mimi Chakraborty and Pratima Mondal; MLAs Jeevan Mukherjee, Debashree Roy and Manturam Pakhira were the leaders absent from the meeting on Thursday, the report stated.

In the run-up to the polls, TMC MLA Dipak Haldar, former ministers Suvendu Adhikari and Rajib Banerjee, actor Yash Dasgupta, Hiran Chatterjee, veteran Papiya Adhikari and several others have joined the saffron party.

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The BJP is pursuing the elections aggressively with various TMC loyalists turning towards Shah's party citing concerns at Mamata's camp.

However, BJP's national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya had suggested gatekeeping and preventing "mass joinings" of TMC leaders who do not have a "clean image."

"We do not want to become B team of the Trinamool," he had said declaring that there would be scrutiny and only "selective joinings."

The BJP is hell-bent on penetrating into the state, which has largely kept the party at bay. and looks to deploy all resources to come to power in Bengal.

Assembly elections in the state is due in April-May this year.