Since the results of the by-elections in West Bengal were declared, it has been a writing on the wall that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will replace the Left parties as the principal challenger to Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress in the state. The party's position appeared to have got a kind of approval on Wednesday, as the French ambassador to India, Francois Richier, decided to meet BJP's state president, Rahul Sinha, and not someone from the Left camp. Terming the ambassador's gesture a "pleasant surprise", Sinha later said Richier had assured him of French investment in the state, if the law-and-order situation turned favourable.
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