Trinamool ropes in two Congress leaders, losing one

On a day the rebel Trinamool Congress leader Somen Mitra rejoined the Congress, the ruling party too roped in two state Congress leaders - former president of the state Mahila Congress Maitree Saha and a former PCC vice president Nityananda De.
TMC general secretary Mukul Roy told reporters that apart from the two, several members of elected panchayat bodies representing the Congress, CPI(M), Forward Bloc and SUCI also joined the ruling party today.
Mohammad Asafuddin, a former PCC general secretary, and Sandip Dutta, a former PCC secretary, also joined the TMC along with former Howrah district Congress committee president Krishna Chandra.

An elected CPI(M) panchayat member from Kultali Sadananda Ghosh also joined the party.
Saha was removed as president of the West Bengal Mahila Congress in December, 2012 by the Congress high command which had appointed Kavita Rehman to the post.
Veteran Congress leader Dey was the former Howrah DCC president. He was the WBPCC vice-president before the split of the party in the state.

Recently several state Congress leaders, including some party MLAs had defected to the TMC.
Roy claimed, "People from across the state have supported Trinamool Congress for the state government's development-oriented projects."
The TMC general secretary said the Congress leadership had hobnobbed with the CPI(M).

Meanwhile, veteran politician Somen Mitra, who had deserted the Congress to form his own party which later merged with the TMC in 2007, today came back to his former party.
A Congress stalwart, Mitra was the state Congress president in the 90s. After having a strained relation with the Trinamool, he recently quit as the TMC MP from Diamond Harbour.