A BJP MLA believed to be close to East Midnapore strongman Suvendu Adhikari joined the Trinamool Congress on Monday.

Haldia lawmaker Tapasi Mondal said she had had enough of the BJP’s “divisive” agenda. Suvendu tried to downplay the defection, saying the MLA had fallen out of favour.

Mondal was also the president of the BJP unit in East Midnapore, Adhikari’s backyard.

With Mondal switching sides, the BJP’s numbers in the 294-member Bengal Assembly have dwindled to 65, down from the 77 seats the party had won in the 2021 elections. Trinamool now has 228 MLAs.

“Divisive politics is all that the BJP has been up to. One can clearly see that it has been rejected by the people of Bengal. Accepting such an agenda was becoming increasingly difficult for me,” Mondal, 53, said.

“Ours is a multilingual, multicultural, multireligious nation and Bengal is the flagbearer of that rich tradition,” Mondal added. “Besides, I have full faith in Mamata Banerjee’s politics of development and progress.”

Mondal, originally a Congress-backed CPM MLA, had defected to the BJP ahead of the 2021 Assembly elections under Adhikari’sstewardship.

Shyamal Maiti, a BJP core committee member, accompanied Mondal to Trinamool.

Many saw in Mondal’s move a continuation of the “culture of defections that Mamata Banerjee has introduced to Bengal politics”. It is through crossovers that Trinamool has achieved significant growth in districts considered the bastions of other parties, such as the Congress or the Left in Malda and Murshidabad.

Asked about Mondal’s defection, Nandigram MLA Adhikari said: “It does not matter. Who is she? A lot of people had come then (ahead of the 2021 Assembly elections) and the list of those who had not been allowed in is even longer. We saw her departure coming a while ago. She has no support even at theblock level.”

Adhikari, speaking shortly after Mondal had received the Trinamool flag from power minister Aroop Biswas, added: “Will she have thecourage to come to the Assembly on Tuesday andstate that she is now in Trinamool? I dare her.... She did this because she was not going to remain thedistrict president.”

Mondal made it clear that she was unhappywith Adhikari backing Tamluk MP and former judge Abhijit Gangopadhyay. “Gangopadhyay was brought in by Adhikari (before the 2024 Lok Sabha polls) from outside and made a candidate. Gangopadhyay doesn’t get along with anyone in the BJP,”she said.

Trinamool leader Tanmoy Ghosh played a key role in Mondal’s defection, sources said.

BJP sources said theyhad found out on Sundaythat Mondal had met Trinamool state president Subrata Bakshi in Calcutta. OnMonday, she went to the Assembly and signed the attendance register as a BJP MLA before proceeding to Trinamool Bhavan to join the ruling party.

She later met Mamata at Nabanna.

“There is no denying that this is embarrassing and a setback for him (Adhikari), although he would never admit it,” said an insider.