In an open letter addressed to Trinamool Congress (TMC) cadre right before resigning from the party on 18 December, now BJP leader Suvendu Adkhikari said "an extremely deep rot and malaise" has set in to the party.
Taking a jibe at TMC supremo and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, he said that it was extremely painful that some people in charge were treating the party as their fief.
"Neither West Bengal nor the Trinamool Congress is anyone’s fiefdom," he said. He asked the party workers to join hands and start a new beginning. "Our fight is to restore West Bengal to its glory," he wrote, adding how West Bengal was standing at a critical juncture as the people of the state are destined to make a choice in the 2021 Assembly elections that will impact them forever.
Suvendu, who was a close aide of Banerjee, joined the BJP formally on 19 December in the presence of Union Home Minister Amit Shah in Paschim Medinipur in the run up to the 2021 West Bengal elections.
“The very people on the backs of whom the party was created are now being sidelined, humiliated and outcast. In their stead, the individuals have now hired external assistance, people with no knowledge of ground realities and no knowledge of the sacrifice it actually takes to work for a shared goal as ambitious as creating the West Bengal of our dreams,” he wrote.
He said that TMC was not built overnight or by one person, and that it was a continuous and contiguous effort on a mammoth scale, the culmination of which was the TMC’s coming to power in West Bengal in 2011. He also said that the party which was once built by ordinary people who worked selflessly and without desires, is now filled with individuals who do not bother about anyone but themselves. His letter read that the party was filled with "Sakam Karma Bhogis" or individuals who are not bothered about anyone but themselves.
"I have not left the Trinamool...It is Trinamool that has left its ideals behind in its relentless pursuit of power instead of service," Adhikari wrote.
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