Mamata chose them for Rajya Sabha, BJP fields them now

New Delhi: The BJP on Thursday named Sushmita Dev, Sukhendu Sekhar Ray and Prakash Chik Baraik as its candidates for the Rajya Sabha bypolls from West Bengal, hours after the three former Trinamool Congress MPs joined the party in Kolkata. The announcement would have been important even as a routine bypoll decision. It became sharper because of who the candidates are. All three had reached the Rajya Sabha on TMC tickets. They were not ordinary defectors picked from the margins of Bengal politics. They were leaders whom the Trinamool leadership had once considered good enough to represent the party in Parliament. BJP turns TMC’s own certificate into a weapon y fielding Dev, Ray and Baraik, the BJP has not merely accepted three former TMC leaders. It has taken Mamata Banerjee’s own earlier political certification and used it against her. The argument writes itself for the BJP. If these leaders were fit to sit in the Rajya Sabha as TMC nominees until recently, the Trinamool cannot easily dismiss them as irrelevant simply because they now stand on a BJP ticket. This is where the move hurts the TMC more than a normal defection. Why this cuts deeper than routine defection The three bypolls were caused by the resignations of Sukhendu Sekhar Ray, Sushmita Dev and Prakash Chik Baraik from the Upper House. The by-elections are scheduled for July 24. That gives the BJP’s decision a clean political sequence: TMC nominates them, they resign, they join BJP, and BJP fields them again for the same House. The BJP did not allow the defections to remain a one-day news event. By announcing their candidature almost immediately, it converted the resignations into a larger message: leaders who leave the TMC will not be made to wait outside the gate. TMC’s familiar attack becomes harder The Trinamool has often attacked the BJP over “washing machine politics”, accusing it of absorbing leaders who cross over from rival parties. This is the trap the BJP has set. If the TMC attacks them too strongly, it will have to explain why it sent them to Parliament. If it stays quiet, it allows the BJP to claim that the Trinamool’s own parliamentary bench is no longer secure. Three exits, three different wounds Sushmita Dev was once useful to the Trinamool’s national ambition. After leaving the Congress and joining the TMC, she helped Mamata Banerjee’s party project itself beyond Bengal and into the Northeast conversation. Sukhendu Sekhar Ray was a long-standing parliamentary face of the TMC. His exit carries weight because it comes from the party’s Rajya Sabha space, where he was not a ceremonial presence but one of its familiar voices. Prakash Chik Baraik had significance in north Bengal and in the tea garden and tribal political conversation. His elevation to the Rajya Sabha was itself a signal of what the TMC wanted to represent in that region. The move allows the BJP to claim that different parts of the TMC’s political architecture are loosening at the same time: national outreach, parliamentary experience and regional representation.