After nearly seven years in active politics, singer and former Union Minister Babul Supriyo on Saturday announced his farewell. The BJP MP in a social media post said he was bidding goodbye to politics and would also step down as an MP.

He would continue to be actively involved in social work.

Supriyo’s move, many say, comes close on the heels of his dismal show in the just concluded Bengal Assembly Elections. His exit from the Union Cabinet and reports of him not getting along with the Bengal-unit’s leadership, could have acted as other possible triggers.

The former Union Minister, in his post has also referred to his reported differences with the state’s leadership. And clarified he was not joining any other party.

“Chollaam..Alvida (Goodbye). I’m not going to join any other political party. The Trinamool Congress, Congress, CPI(M) – nobody has called me. I’m not going anywhere...One need not be in politics to do social work,” Supriyo said while announcing his exit from politics on social networking platform Facebook. His post has been written in Bengali, his mother-tongue.

Supriyo, joined the BJP two months ahead of the general elections in 2014 and surprisingly won the hotly contested Assansol seat. He was one of the two MPs of the BJP from Bengal at a time when a Modi Wave swept the county but couldn’t leave its mark here. He was rewarded with a Cabinet berth as MoS.

In 2019, he won a second term with PM Modi himself taking active interest in the campaigning. Supriyo won with one of the highest victory margins amongst the 18 MPs from Bengal.

The singer said he had reached out to the BJP top-brass, JP Nadda and Amit Shah, communicating his decision to step down. However, each time they had convinced him to stay back.

A self-professed fan of Prime Minister Modi and former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayeeji, Supriyo in his Facebook post referred to the stupendous rise of the BJP as a dominant opposition force in Bengal, his meeting with Baba Ramdev on a flight which convinced him to join the saffron brigade, among other points.

Referring to “differences in opinion” between himself and the BJP’s state leadership, he maintained such differences should not have come out in the open. Without blaming anyone Supriyo said such “different voices in the party’s leadership” do not boost the morale of grassroots workers and it is “no rocket science”.

comment COMMENT NOW