Two newly-elected BJP MLAs resign...Here's why!

Two newly-elected BJP MLAs in the state of West Bengal have on Wednesday tabled their resignations to the House Speaker as they are already serving as the party's MPs in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Parliament. With the resignation, the current strength of the Central ruling party in the state assembly has declined to 75 from 77. 

According to reports, BJP Lok Sabha MPs Jagannath Sarkar and Nitish Pramanik had tendered their resignations as the members of the West Bengal assembly, to which they were elected in the recent polls. Sarkar has been serving as the MP of Ranaghat while Pramanik is an MP from the Cooch Behar constituency. As the constitution won't grant simultaneous services to the Parliament and the state assembly, both the MLAs had resigned from their posts. 

Both of them had met with West Bengal Assembly Speaker Biman Banerjee and tabled their resignations. Pramanik said that they are quitting as MLAs as per the directive of the BJP leadership. The Central ruling party has also fielded two other Lok Sabha MPs - Union Minister Babul Supriyo and Locket Chatterjee and Rajya Sabha member Swapan Dasgupta- they all of them had eventually had lost the election.

Pramanik said they cannot remain members of both the Lok Sabha and the state assembly simultaneously. Pramanik was one of the BJP candidates who won the assembly polls in a nail-biting race. He won the election from the Dinhata constituency by defeating Trinamool Congress's candidate Udayan Guha in a razor-thin margin of 57 votes. 

While Pramanik won the election by 57 votes, Sarkar won the polls from the Santipur constituency by a huge margin of 15,878 votes. As they have now resigned from the posts, BJP's strength has reduced from 77 to 75 in the current assembly and these two seats will go for by-elections along with the other two seats where the election didn't take place owing to the death of the candidates.

In the recently-held assembly elections, BJP had faced a big blow in its campaign after Mamata Banerjee had retained the reign and became the Chief Minister of West Bengal for the third consecutive time. In the 294-member assembly, Mamata's Trinamool Congress has won 213 seats while the BJP has ended up securing 77 seats. While Mamata Banerjee has assumed as the Chief Minister, she is yet to get elected to the assembly as she has individually lost the race in Nandigram to BJP's Suvendu Adhikari.

It has been reported that Mamata will pick one of the four constituencies to get elected as an MLA. As per the constitutional norm, she has to secure an elected berth in the assembly within six months from assuming office. While both the BJP MLAs had resigned from the post as per the directive of the party's Central leadership, Sarkar, one of the resigned MLAs had affirmed that their fighting in the assembly polls despite being MPs and then resigning the seats after winning the polls won't have any rooms for the organizational weakness of the BJP. 

 

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