Kolkata, June 10 (IANS) Trinamool Congress Rajya Sabha member Sushmita Dev on Wednesday resigned from both the Upper House of Parliament and the primary membership of the party, becoming the second such exit from the TMC this week.

After tendering her resignation, Dev met Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma in Delhi, triggering speculation about her possible move to join the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

She is the second Trinamool Congress Rajya Sabha member to resign in a week.

Earlier on June 8, veteran party leader, Sukhendu Sekhar Roy, also resigned as Rajya Sabha member and from the primary membership of Trinamool Congress, claiming his decision was prompted by his desire to accept the verdict of the people of West Bengal in the recently concluded assembly in the state.

According to him, the verdict was a mass rejection of Trinamool Congress “due to rampant corruption, indiscriminate crime against women, and overall deterioration in all spheres like education, health, industrial development, employment generation, and law & order situation in the state during the 15 years of its regime”.

Sushmita Dev, whose political roots lie in Assam and the Congress, is the daughter of former Union minister Santosh Mohan Dev, who served as Union minister under three Congress Prime Ministers — Late Rajiv Gandhi, Late P. V. Narasimha Rao, and Late Dr Manmohan Singh.

Sushmita Dev, herself, was a Congress Lok Sabha member from Bengali-dominated Silchar constituency in Assam from 2014 to 2019. However, in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, she was defeated by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s Rajdeep Roy.

Thereafter, she joined Trinamool Congress in August 2021, and former West Bengal Chief Minister, Mamata Banerjee, entrusted her the task of expanding Trinamool Congress network in the northeastern states, including Dev’s native state of Assam.

She had served two terms as a Trinamool Congress. The first was an interim term from October 2021 to August 2023. Her second term in the Upper House of the Parliament started from April 2024, and this time she resigned before completing her full term of six years.

–IANS

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