Hardly two weeks after former city mayor, Sovan Chatterjee and his associate Baisakhi Banerjee joined the BJP on 14 August in Delhi, the duo have threatened to leave the party. They have also conveyed their intent verbally to the BJP leader, Mr Kailash Vijayvargiya, the party’s national general secretary in charge of Bengal. Mr Chatterjee and Ms Banerjee decided to take such a drastic step because they were not happy with the BJP since they joined the party, it was learnt.

They met Mr Vijayvargiya on 28 August at his residence in the city expressing their grievances against the BJP leadership. Some BJP insiders said that Mrs Banerjee demanded a rank equal to Mr Chatterjee who is being considered by the BJP leadership to look after the party’s programmes in Kolkata and in South 24-Parganas district. Mr Chatterjee was also the president of the ruling Trinamul Congress’ South 24-Parganas district unit till last year.

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He has a good political network in the district and BJP leadership wants to utilise his experience if he is given charges of South 24-Parganas where the saffron party is organisationally weak. Another issue which has aggrieved the former mayor and his associate is the reported bid by Ms Deboshree Roy, Trinamul Congress MLA from Raidighi in South 24-Parganas to join the BJP. Both of them are strongly against the BJP’s reported plan to induct Ms Roy, who met with the BJP’s central leadership in Delhi on 14 August the same day that the former mayor and Ms Banerjee joined the saffron party.

A few days ago, Ms Roy also visited BJP state president Mr Dilip Ghosh’s Salt Lake residence to finalise her joining the party, but he was not at home. The BJP leadership reportedly have stuck to its decision to induct Ms Roy ignoring the opposition of Mr Chatterjee and Ms Banerjee against the move. While giving an interview to a Bengali news channel Ms Banerjee said,“We are not happy with the treatment we are getting from the party since we joined. We want to leave and will send resignation letters to the party leadership in time.”

Later in the day Mr Ghosh while reacting to Mr Chatterjee and Ms Banerjee’s threat to quit the party, said, “The issue may be solved through discussions.” BJP MP Mrs Locket Chatterjee said, “Everybody will have to follow BJP’s rules and regulations first if they want to stay in the party.”