Kolkata: In a major setback for the Trinamool Congress (TMC) on its home turf on Sunday, the over 500 Bajrang Dal activists from Purulia whom it had weaned away to its fold made a ‘ghar wapasi’.

Making their way back home, so to say, the activists of the youth wing of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) joined the BJP at their Kolkata office in the presence of Mukul Roy, the sworn detractor of chief minister Mamata Banerjee.

Of those who had made way to TMC was also Purulia’s district coordinator of the Bajrang Dal, Suraj Sharma. He had been accommodated as youth TMC’s district secretary, but even he chose to come back to the saffron fold.

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“The experience in the TMC was extremely stifling. Their first condition was that we should forget our religion, but that cannot be and we could not accept that. We had committed a mistake by moving to the TMC and that too had happened under the false promise that we would be allowed to work for the betterment of the nation and society,” Sharma told MyNation in an exclusive conversation.

“Now we have gird our loins to, once again, make the organisation strong and oppose the TMC and its policies of religious appeasement,” Sharma added.  

Purulia has witnessed, of late, a stiff struggle between TMC cadre and the right-wing organisations. A VHP leader, Kartik Kumar Ghorai, had gone missing after attending UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath's rally in Purulia in February. The BJP had claimed that TMC henchmen had abducted him.  

Earlier, two BJP workers, Trilochan Mahato and Dulal Kumar, had been found hanging from trees in Purulia.