Babul Supriyo links BJP's Bengal defeat to indiscriminate induction of leaders

Kolkata: Former Union minister Babul Supriyo, who quit BJP to join Trinamool Congress last week, said the indiscriminate inductions of people into the BJP ahead of the Assembly elections might be the reason for its poor performance in West Bengal.

Supriyo told PTI in an interview that his view on the matter may not have been liked by the BJP's top brass.

"Many outsiders with no previous links to the BJP overnight became our party leaders and this might have contributed to our assembly poll performance. I had opposed such indiscriminate taking of people without checking their antecedents but my words were not heeded to," he said.

"I thought my words against such affairs in BJP before the polls may not have been liked by the top leadership," he added.

Supriyo said BJP state president Dilip Ghosh was also partly responsible for the assembly poll debacle of the party. "His comments during the poll campaign were not in sync with the culture of Vidyasagar, Rabindranath Tagore and Satyajit Ray, and incongruous with the ethos of Bengalis. It had contributed to the decline of the party in the Bengali psyche," he said.

Supriyo, who announced in July that he was quitting politics after being dropped as a minister, said he was disillusioned and wanted to give more time to arts and music.

"But, I definitely nursed a desire to return to active politics and I got that opportunity from the TMC. I wanted to be in the 11-member squad of a team — if not in my favourite Mohun Bagan, then in East Bengal or another good club. I thank TMC for giving me that opportunity," he said.

Supriyo, a noted singer, said he was aware of the trolling on social media after he joined the TMC. "People have the right to say what they deem fit, but were not the same terms — 'gaddar' and 'Mirzafar' — used against those who had left TMC to join the BJP some months back?"

He said it would be the prerogative of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and senior party leader Abhishek Banerjee to give him whatever responsibility they seem appropriate.

Supriyo recalled how he and Abhishek sent legal notices to each other ahead of the assembly elections. He said he would now hand over the notices he received to Abhishek, and he hoped that the senior TMC leader would also do the same. "And, I look forward to a great association with Abhishek," he said.