Three former Trinamool Congress Rajya Sabha MPs, Sushmita Dev, Sukhendu Sekhar Roy, and Prakash Chik Baraik, formally joined the BJP on July 9, 2026, at an induction ceremony held at the party's state headquarters in Kolkata's Salt Lake, marking the first time the BJP has directly admitted former TMC leaders into its fold since coming to power in West Bengal in May. In a striking twist, all three were named as the BJP's official candidates for the July 24 Rajya Sabha bypolls in West Bengal within hours of joining, filling the very seats they had vacated after resigning from both the Upper House and the TMC the previous month amid internal factionalism following the party's Assembly election defeat.

The move marks a notable shift in BJP strategy. West Bengal BJP president Samik Bhattacharya described the induction as a deliberate "exception" to the party's usual closed-door approach toward defectors, rather than a broader policy change, emphasizing that the BJP would continue to reject leaders accused of corruption or linked to political syndicates. Until this point, rebel TMC Lok Sabha MPs had instead aligned themselves with the Tripura-based Nationalist Citizens Party of India, a smaller outfit friendly to the ruling NDA, while separate rebel TMC MLAs pursued their own path by declaring themselves the "real" TMC and attempting to remove Mamata Banerjee as party chairperson, triggering an ongoing legal and political dispute over control of the party itself.

This latest defection adds to a string of recent departures from the TMC, including former West Bengal Finance Minister Chandrima Bhattacharya, a longtime Mamata Banerjee loyalist, who exited the party just days earlier on July 5. The backdrop also includes deeper internal turmoil within the TMC, with nearly 60 of its 80 MLAs having rebelled against party leadership in early June to install Ritabrata Banerjee as Leader of the Opposition, prompting TMC National General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee to formally demand the disqualification of the rebel MPs.
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