‘Disillusioned’, over 100 Trinamool workers join Forward Bloc

More than 100 supporters of TMC joins AIFB under the leadership of Advocate Ashok Banerjee mostly from Behala joka and Jadavpur area. Express photo by Partha Paul.Kolkata.02.05.17

More than 100 Trinamool Congress workers joined the All India Forward Bloc (AIFB) on Tuesday in the presence of state Bloc secretary Naren Chatterjee. “These people had supported TMC in 2011, and voted for Trinamool Congress again in 2016. They later realised that the real change did not take place, and have decided to join our party,” Chatterjee said after the official induction at AIFB state headquarters, where he handed them the party’s flag.

The mass defection of workers from Behala, Joka, Jadavpur and Rajarhat was engineered by Calcutta High Court lawyer Ashok Bandyopadhyay, who had supported the TMC in 2011 and 2016. Asked to comment on why they joined the Forward Bloc instead of other parties, Bandyopadhyay said: “With the help of Trinamool Congress, communal polarisation is taking place in every district of west Bengal.

“We have decided to join Forward Bloc to protest against this, and because we believe in the ideals of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose.” The Bloc was founded by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose in 1939.