Kolkata: West Bengal politics, known for its uncanny twists and turns, took another toll in the married life of a politician, more precisely a candidate, two days before the fourth phase of Lok Sabha election get underway.
In a re-run of Saumitra-Sujata Khan episode, Swastika Maheshwari, the wife of Trinamool Congress candidate Mukut Mani Adhikari, joined the BJP on Saturday, two days before the May 13 Lok Sabha elections at Ranaghat in West Bengal’s Nadia district.
Earlier, West Bengal’s ‘power couple’ Saumita Khan, a TMC turncoat, and his wife Sujata Khan announced divorce following ‘political differences’
The ‘revenge’ politics was played out in West Bengal’s Bishnupur constituency of Bankura district where former ‘power couple’ of Sujata Mondal of the Trinamool Congress (TMC) and Saumitra Khan, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) candidate, are fielded br the TMC and BJP.
West Bengal became the fertile ground of ‘revenge politics’ that even made its entry in families. The TMC had named Mondal as the candidate from Bishnupur a month after the BJP announced Khan’s candidature for the seat.
On Saturday, Swastika Maheshwari, who is already contesting a divorce suit against her husband, while joining the BJP at a party rally in Ranaghat in the presence of megastar and BJP leader Mithun Chakraborty, also appealed to voters to ensure defeat of her husband.
On Saturday, Mithun was campaigning for the BJP’s Jagannath Sarkar, who had been elected from the constituency in 2019. Sarkar now has against him Mukut Mani Adhikari, a doctor, who was elected to the state assembly from Ranaghat Dakshin constituency on a BJP ticket in 2021 but joined the Trinamool Congress just ahead of the parliamentary elections this year.
“Anyone voting for Mukut Mani Adhikari will be cheated exactly like me,” she said. The development comes as a major embarrassment concerning Mukut Mani Adhikari, against whom Swastika Maheswari filed a complaint just a few days after their marriage last year accusing him of cruelty against her.
Adhikari’s nomination as Trinamool Congress candidate has been marred with controversy. He was elected as a BJP legislator in the 2021 West Bengal assembly elections from the Ranaghat-Dakshin constituency, one of the seven under the Ranaghat Lok Sabha.
Earlier this year, he joined Trinamool Congress. However, his name was announced as a Trinamool Congress candidate from Ranaghat before he resigned as a BJP legislator. As the BJP started making an issue of it, he finally resigned from the state assembly as a member last month.
Till the time this report was filed, there was no reaction from Mukut Mani Adhikari.