Another Bengali actress leaves BJP stage

Team News Riveting

Kolkata, November 11

Another Bengali film actor Srabanti today quit the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) even as celebrities inducted in the saffron camp before elections have been slowly moving out after the party’s defeat.

Two actors from Bengali television and cinema, Rupa Bhattacharjee and Anindya Banerjee, had severed ties with the BJP in August. It came weeks after the Bengal BJP’s most prominent celebrity, Bollywood singer-turned politician Babul Supriyo, who won the Asansol Lok Sabha seat twice and served as union minister of state, announced his decision to quit BJP.

Babul joined the Bengal’s ruling party Trinamool Congress and so are the other film stars. Srabanti tweeted that BJP had failed to “further the cause of Bengal”. She did not, however, make any announcement about joining any other party or about her future political ambitions.

Bengal BJP leaders said several popular actors such as Shrabanti Chatterjee, Payel Sarkar, Tanushree Chakraborty and Yash Dasgupta distanced themselves from the party after failing to win seats.

The 34-year-old actor had been maintaining a distance from the saffron party after it failed to unseat Mamata Banerjee’s TMC-led government from power despite a high-pitched campaign. She tweeted: “Severing all ties with the BJP, the party for which I fought the last state elections. Reason being their lack of initiative and sincerity to further the cause of Bengal…”

Her decision instantly triggered a debate in the Bengal BJP, with several leaders questioning the induction of actors prior to the polls. Many accused the party’s central leaders including national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya instrumental in the induction of celebrities including Chatterjee in the BJP. Vijayvargiya has not visited Bengal since May.

“Some Srabanti Chatterjee, said to be an actress, with no connection ever to BJP or its ideology, was inducted into the party, given a ticket, oodles of money. Lost the election, lay low, now left the party. I don’t understand why everyone is so excited about it? Is it because people are now wondering WHY she was taken in the party and feted with money? Why, indeed?” tweeted Tathagata Roy, former BJP President, a retired technocrat who earlier served as Governor of Tripura and Meghalaya, and the most vocal among the critics.

He added, “A huge lot of garbage just like her, was brought into the BJP and feted similarly. They are mostly gone now. This is not to say that ALL the people who came in were garbage, but many were. Many like Srabanti were brought in from questionable motives. Some like Mukul Roy, were moles, Trojan Horses. People who had served the party for decades were sidelined, and the leaders danced around the new-found garbage and promised the public 200 seats. There is no better way of destroying a political party than ignoring ideologically committed workers and replacing them with mercenaries, time-servers, Trojan Horses, lackeys. etc.”