Guwahati, Aug 16 (Agencies): All India Mahila Congress president and former MP from Silchar Sushmita Dev resigned from the Congress Sunday, and joined Trinamool Congress (TMC) in presence of TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee.
Inducting Dev into the party, TMC tweeted, \u201cWe warmly welcome the former President of All India Mahila Congress Sushmita Dev to our Trinamool family!\u201d
According to The Indian Express, the resignation of Dev \u2014 who is the daughter of seven-time parliamentarian Santosh Mohan Dev and considered the face of the Congress in Assam\u2019s largely Bengali-speaking Barak Valley \u2014 comes as a big blow to the Congress. In the recently-concluded Assam Assembly elections in May, the Congress\u2014 which had partnered with Badruddin Ajmal\u2019s All India United Democratic Front (AIDUF) \u2014 was defeated by the NDA alliance. Since then, at least two prominent Congress legislators (Rupjyoti Kurmi and Sushanta Borgohain) have jumped ship to the BJP.
In a letter to Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, Dev did not mention why she was resigning but said that she cherished her \u201cthree-decade-long association\u201d with the party. \u201cMay I take this opportunity to thank the party, all its leaders, members, and workers who have been a part of my memorable journey,\u201d Dev wrote in the letter, expressing gratitude to Sonia Gandhi for her \u201cguidance.\u201dFollowing Dev\u2019s resignation, senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal tweeted: \u201cSushmita Dev Resigns from primary membership of our Party. While young leaders leave we \u2018oldies\u2019 are blamed for our efforts to strengthen it The Party moves on with: Eyes Wide Shut.\u201d Congress leader of the Opposition in Assam, Debabrata Saikia confirmed to The Indian Express that Dev had sent a letter to Sonia Gandhi on Friday night. On Saturday afternoon, the Congress high command \u2014 including Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi \u2014 had a meeting with the delegations of the Assam Pradesh Congress Committee in Delhi. \u201cShe was very much a part of the meeting\u2026we were not aware she was going to quit,\u201d said Saikia.
However, rumours of Dev\u2019s quitting surfaced in February, when she is said to have walked out of a party meeting in Guwahati unhappy over selection of candidates and seat-sharing with AIUDF in the three Barak Valley districts in south Assam. Later in an interview, she told The Indian Express that she \u201cnever wanted to resign\u201d but was \u201churt\u201d. \u201cWhen we had a one-on-one conversation before the elections, she was mentioning that she did not prefer the Congress alliance with AIUDF. However, she worked for the party after that\u2026I do not know what happened recently but the old reason was that she was against the AIUDF alliance,\u201d Saikia said.
Sources said that she was \u201cdisgruntled\u201d with the party because she felt that her \u201cpolitical space was continuously being shrunk\u201d. \u201cHer Lok Sabha seat (Silchar) has about seven assembly segments\u2026 there were talks that that half of them would be given to the AIUDF or and some to Muslim candidates in the Congress in the Assembly elections. She felt that it would decimate the Congress in Barak Valley, alienate the Hindu voters further, and hurt her chances in 2024 elections as well,\u201d a source close to her said.
\u201cShe felt she was not taken seriously and neither was she consulted for key decisions.Even when it came to the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), her position as a Bengali Hindu (the community largely supports the CAA in Assam) came in conflict with her party\u2019s official stand on the Act,\u201d the source said.
Saikia said that he heard that Dev was in talks with the TMC. The source added that she may \u201cplay a \u201cnational\u201d role in the TMC \u2014 especially with the TMC trying to make \u2018serious\u2019 inroads into Tripura.\u201d
Dev\u2019s father, Santosh Mohan Dev is still a big name in Tripura, and in his seven terms as an MP, he had represented Silchar from Assam five times and Tripura twice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Guwahati, Aug 16 (Agencies): All India Mahila Congress president and former MP from Silchar Sushmita Dev resigned from the Congress Sunday, and joined Trinamool Congress (TMC) in presence of TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee.Inducting Dev into the party, TMC tweeted, \u201cWe warmly welcome the former President of All India Mahila Congress Sushmita Dev to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":508,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}