Bankura: A sort of ‘revenge’ politics is being played out in West Bengal’s Bishnupur constituency of Bankura district which will witness a face-off between former couple Sujata Mondal of the Trinamool Congress (TMC) and Saumitra Khan, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) candidate, in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.
The TMC named Mondal as the candidate from Bishnupur on Sunday, while the BJP announced Khan’s candidature for the seat earlier this month.
A fairytale story of love of 10 years that blossomed over shared political aspirations has died on the altar of the political ambition in 2020 after Mondal was ‘lured’ to join politics as a member of the TMC in the run-up to the 2021 assembly elections.
Shocked at the suden twist in their happy conjigal life, as BJP MP Khan, who made a public view of crying, sent divorce papers to his wife Sujata Mondal Khan, a day after she joined the Trinamool Congress.
Those especially well-wishers, who were close to the couple helplessly, watched the end of what they described as a fairytale courtship between two like-minded individuals.
What went wrong?
Sujata, who met Saumitra in 2010, when he was a member of the Congress and she was a teacher in a government primary school, soon got closer. Sujata was described as someone standing by Saumitra like a ‘pillar.’
A decade down the line, Khan’s four-page divorce affidavit, described Sujata as a “hyper-sensitive and quarrelsome” in the travesty of the tale.
Saumitra accused her as a wife who, “assaulted and mentally tortured” him to get a leg-up while she was with the BJP. Initially, the couple was separated for six months, and that their marriage had suffered on account of Sujata’s ‘political ambitions,’ people close to the couple had said then.
Nearly four years after Sujata, joined the TMC and metamorphosed herslf into a ‘devoted’ TMC worker and close to Mamata and Abhishek Banerjee, she earned a Lok Sabha ticket from Bishnupur of Bankura district.
TMC announced candidates for all 42 Lok Sabha seats in the state, abandoning the opposition coalition, INDIA bloc. The list of candidates was released by TMC’s general secretary, Abhishek Banerjee, at the Brigade Parade Ground.