Actor Shatrughan Sinha, who was once a Union minister in Atal Behari Vajpayee’s cabinet, will now don Trinamul colours with party Mamata Banerjee announcing his name as the party nominee from the Asansol Lok Sabha constituency for a byelection to be held on April 12.
If elected, Sinha will replace another former BJP MP and junior minister in Narendra Modi’s first term, singer Babul Supriyo, who has been nominated from the Ballygunge Assembly constituency.
The Asansol seat fell vacant after Supriyo joined the Trinamul and resigned, while the Ballygunge seat was held by late minister Subrata Mukherjee, who passed away last year.
“Happy to announce on behalf of the All India Trinamool Congress that Sri Shatrughan Sinha, former Union Minister and famed actor, will be our candidate in Loksabha by-election from Asansol,” tweeted Mamata on Sunday noon.
“Sri Babul Supriyo, former union minister and noted singer, will be our candidate in Vidhansabha by- election from Ballygunge. Jai Hind, Jai Bangla, Jai Ma- Mati- Manush!,” Mamata said in another tweet.
Babul was handpicked by Modi on the recommendation of Baba Ramdev to contest from the Asansol Lok Sabha seat in 2014. A vical critic of Mamat, he was made a junior minister _ till he joined the Trinamul in September last year. For the Trinamul, Babul was the choicest target until Suvendu Adhikari switched camps and became the leader of the Opposition defeating Mamata in Nandigram.
Sinha did not respond to calls made by this correspondent.
On his Twitter feed, he was all praise for former Union finance minister P Chidambaram over an article that the latter wrote for the Sunday pages of a Delhi-based newspaper.
“An educative, informative and an article to learn from. Former finance minister an intellectual par excellence P Chidambaram writes about gentle and tough leaders. Not to be missed. An excellent read. Jai Hind,” tweeted Sinha.
Two days ago, he had also congratulated the Uttar Pradesh chief minister for his winning a second term, a victory that Sinha’s next political boss reckons would be BJP’s Waterloo.
Mamata has a history of fielding members from film and music industry in the poll fray. Her first such nominee was veteran actor Madhabi Mukherjee against then chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee in 2001. As the Trinamul’s fortunes soared over the past two decades, holding Mamata’s hands, the likes of Mithun Chakraborty, Moon Moon Sen, Sandhya Roy, Dev, Mimi Chakraborty and Nusrat Jahan have entered Parliament, while others like Debasree Roy, Chiranjeet, Anup Ghoshal, Indranil Sen, Kanchan Mullik have become lawmakers in Bengal.
Sinha, along with his former Hindi film colleague, the late Vinod Khanna, was among the first from the film industry to join the BJP along with Hema Malini.
Unhappy with the turn of things in the BJP since Modi and Amit Shah took over, Sinha had joined the Congress and lost the Patna Sahib seat which he had won in 2001, to the BJP’s RS Prasad in 2019. Since then, Sinha has largely been in political wilderness.
Babul too was unhappy at being dropped from the ministry, and had at one point announced taking political sanyas.
