Ahead of the 2021 West Bengal Assembly election, the Congress high command formally approved the alliance with the Left parties in the Trinamool Congress-ruled state. The news was announced by Congress MP Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury in a Twitter post.

“Today the Congress High command has formally approved the electoral alliance with the Left parties in the impending election of West Bengal,” Chowdhury tweeted.

As the Assembly election inches closer, the Trinamool, earlier in the month, witnessed the biggest exodus on a single day.

Party heavyweight Suvendu Adhikari and 34 other leaders, including five MLAs and an MP, switched over to the BJP on December 19, reflecting the unease in West Bengal’s ruling party ahead of the assembly elections.

These leaders joined the BJP at a rally Union Home Minister Amit Shah addressed in Midnapore, where he taunted TMC supremo and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, saying she will be left alone in her party by the time the assembly elections, due in April-May next year, are held.

Senior TMC leader and spokesperson Saugata Roy described those who joined the BJP as “traitors and weathercocks”, saying that it is good that such elements are leaving the party.

Besides the TMC lawmakers, two CPI(M) MLAs and one each of the CPI and the Congress joined the saffron camp.

Since the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, when the BJP bagged 18 seats, just four less than the ruling party, 10 TMC MLAs and one each from the Congress and the CPI(M) had switched over to the saffron camp. However, none of them resigned as MLAs.

After the Saturday desertion, 15 MLAs of the TMC, three of the CPI(M) and two belonging to the Congress are with the BJP which had won a meagre six seats in the 294-strong state assembly in 2016.

State Congress president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury termed the growing resentment in the TMC as “poetic justice”.