Sovan Chatterjee to be expelled from party : TMC

The Trinamool Congress which received a jolt by the defection of former Kolkata mayor and MLA Sovan Chatterjee to BJP on Wednesday, will expel him from the party, TMC sources said.

According to senior TMC leader, efforts were on to bring back Chatterjee to the party fold, who had taken sabbatical from active politics since last year due to personal reasons.

"He will be expelled from TMC. The party is yet to make a final announcement," a senior TMC leader told PTI on condition of anonymity.

Chatterjee's joining the BJP is the latest in the flight of TMC MLAs to the saffron party since the decalaration of the Lok Sabha results. Six TMC MLAs, besides one each from the Congress and the CPI-M had also joined the BJP with the saffron party wooing rival party leaders to bolster its strength ahead of the 2021 West Bengal assembly polls.

Chatterjee, a four time MLA of TMC and a councillor of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation for three decades, along with his friend Baishaki Banerjee, who is a leader of TMC's education cell, joined BJP at the party's national headquarters in New Delhi during the day.