Trinamool Congress chairperson Mamata Banerjee on Sunday announced that former Union Minister and actor Shatrughan Sinha would be party’s candidate for the Lok Sabha bypoll from Asansol seat.

The seat fell vacant after the resignation of former Union Minister Babul Supriyo, who defected from the Bharatiya Janata Party ( BJP) to the Trinamool Congress ( TMC) in September 2021 .

Ms. Banerjee announced that Mr. Supriyo would contest from Ballygunje seat in Kolkata. The seat fell vacant after the death of Minister and senior TMC leader Subrata Mukherjee in November 2021. By-elections to Asansol Lok Sabha seat and Ballygunje Assembly seat are scheduled on April 12 and the results will be declared on April 16 .

With the announcement, the TMC leadership has given an opportunity to Mr. Supriyo to get elected to the State Assembly. Mr. Supriyo had quit the BJP and joined the TMC, after he was dropped from the Union Council of Ministers last year.  He has been waiting for the past six months to be given an opportunity by the TMC.

Mr. Sinha had contested the 2019 Lok Sabha polls from Patna on Congress ticket and lost to BJP’s Ravi Shankar Prasad. There were speculations about him joining the TMC since 2021 when the party retained power in West Bengal for the third consecutive time. The announcement of his candidature marks his official association with the TMC.

Asansol is a constituency bordering Jharkhand in West Bengal and has a significant “non-Bengali” population. The BJP had won it in 2014 and 2019 and the decision to field popular actor from the seat  has been taken considering the electorate of the constituency.

Yashwant Sinha, former Union Finance Minister had joined the TMC in March 2021 and has been appointed as national vice-president of the party. In its attempts to establish its footprints outside West Bengal the TMC has given Rajya Sabha berths to Sushmita Deb and Luizinho Faleiro.