Former Kolkata Mayor Sovan Chatterjee, close aide Baishakhi Banerjee join BJP
New Delhi, Aug 14 (IBNS): Once a close aide of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, former Kolkata Mayor Sovan Chatterjee and his 'close friend' Baishakhi Banerjee, joined the Bharatiya Janata Party on Wednesday, months after the Trinamool Congress received a jolt in the Lok Sabha polls in May.
They joined the party in the BJP Headquarters in the presence of senior Bengal BJP leader Mukul Roy.
Sovan Chatterjee and Baisakhi were the talking point of the Bengali media and household last year for their personal lives.
In November last year Sovan Chatterjee resigned from the Mamata cabinet and stepped down from the post of Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC)'s Mayor after his personal and marital discord became the talking point in Bengal.
His estrangement with wife Ratna (he has filed a divorce suit) and his rumoured affair with Baishakhi Banerjee (Chatterjee called her a close friend who stood by him in difficult times) had played out in media over the months.
Almost all Bengali news channels beamed his personal life in prime time with wife Ratna Chatterjee accusing Baishakhi Banerjee of taking him in the wrong path even as Chatterjee vehemently contested it holding that the woman his wife tried to vilify is a "friend in need" who helped him with legal matters during the Narada scam.
Baishaki Banerjee was the teacher-in-charge of Milli-Al-Ameen College For Girls in Beckbagan while her husband Manojit Mandal, who rubbished the charges of Ratna Chatterjee against his wife, is a professor in Jadavpur University.
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