Three former Trinamool Congress Rajya Sabha members—Sushmita Dev, Sukhendu Sekhar Ray and Prakash Chik Baraik—joined the Bharatiya Janata Party in Kolkata on Thursday, marking another high-profile political shift in West Bengal.
The induction took place at the BJP's Salt Lake office in the presence of state unit president Samik Bhattacharya and other senior party leaders. During the programme, Bhattacharya formally welcomed the trio by handing them BJP flags.
Dev, Ray and Baraik had resigned from both the Rajya Sabha and the Trinamool Congress last month after the party's defeat in the West Bengal assembly elections. Ray and Baraik had terms in the Upper House extending until September 2029, while Dev's tenure was scheduled to continue until April 2030.
The Rajya Sabha bypolls for the three vacant seats are slated for July 24, with the BJP expected to secure all three. The West Bengal ruling party has fielded the three former Trinamool MPs as its candidates for the byelections.
“The BJP high command will decide on Rajya Sabha seats. I have joined the party not with the expectation of a Rajya Sabha berth, but as an outgoing MP from West Bengal,” Sushmita Dev said after joining the BJP.
Bhattacharya said the addition of the three former parliamentarians would further strengthen the BJP's organisation in the state, citing their parliamentary experience.
The political landscape in West Bengal underwent a major transformation following the 2026 assembly elections, with the BJP emerging as the dominant force in the 294-member Assembly by winning 208 seats. The Trinamool Congress secured 80 seats, while the Congress and the Aam Janata Unanyan Party (AJUP) won two each. The CPI(M) and the Indian Secular Front (ISF) claimed one seat apiece.
Subsequent resignations brought the BJP's tally down to 207 and reduced the AJP's strength to one, leaving the ruling party with a comfortable majority while the opposition's combined strength stood at 85 legislators.
Ordinarily, those numbers would have enabled the opposition to win one Rajya Sabha seat, with the BJP taking the remaining two. That calculation changed after the Trinamool Congress split into rival factions headed by former chief minister and TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee and Leader of Opposition Ritabrata Banerjee.
Under the present alignment, roughly 65 MLAs are supporting the Ritabrata Banerjee faction, while about 15 legislators remain with the Mamata Banerjee camp.
The split has significantly reshaped the numbers ahead of the Rajya Sabha bypoll.
Based on the electoral formula for the three vacancies, a candidate requires around 70 first-preference votes to be elected. With 207 MLAs, the BJP is in a position to distribute its votes across three candidates and potentially secure around 69 votes for each, while neither faction of the Trinamool Congress has enough legislators on its own to elect a candidate.
"As things stand, the split in the opposition has converted what would normally have been a two-one contest into a situation where the BJP can realistically target all three seats," a senior political analyst told PTI.
