Union minister of state Nisith Pramanik, who was issued an arrest warrant on Wednesday in a 13-year-old extortion case, is a former Trinamool Congress (TMC) youth leader. He rose to be the party’s key leader in North Bengal and joined the BJP in 2019, winning the Cooch Behar Lok Sabha seat. Pramanik, 36, was first under the spotlight as a leader in the Cooch Behar district’s youth political scene in the late 2000s. In his early 20s at the time, he had worked with then TMC district president Rana Bose. Pramanik started gaining ground in the district after Bose’s death in 2009. He would rise up the TMC ranks after Mamata Banerjee assumed office as the Chief Minister of West Bengal in 2011, even becoming a close aide of Abhishek Banerjee, Mamata’s nephew. The relationship, however, was altered in 2018. Due to internal differences, the TMC had rejected the names Pramanik proposed from Cooch Behar for that year’s panchayat elections. Some of the candidates had ended up contesting as Independents and winning. Pramanik was expelled from the party in 2019. He was among the TMC leaders to have joined the BJP ahead of the Lok Sabha elections that year and ended up winning his maiden Lok Sabha seat from Cooch Behar. Pramanik also contested the 2021 Assembly election, from Dinhata, but later decided to resign from the post to remain an MP. He was also sworn in as Minister of State in the Home Affairs Ministry the same year. A member of the Rajbanshi tribal community that resides in North Bengal, he is considered important within the BJP ranks due to his relationship with the community’s leader Ananta Maharaj. Pramanik was at the centre of controversy in July 2021, when his nationality created debate in the Parliament. TMC leader Ripun Bora, who was the Congress’s Rajya Sabha MP then, wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking an investigation into his nationality, alleging that Pramanik was a Bangladeshi citizen. Mallikarjun Kharge, the Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha then, had also questioned his citizenship and TMC MP Sukhendu Sekhar Roy alleged he was Bangladeshi, citing his Wikipedia page as reference. However, BJP MP Piyush Goyal, the Leader of the Rajya Sabha, termed the allegations “baseless”. Earlier this month, the BJP claimed that TMC workers pelted stones at the minister’s vehicle when he was travelling from Gosanimari to Sitai. The TMC denied the charge.
