The BJP named actress Koel Mallik as its Rajya Sabha candidate on Sunday. Mamata Banerjee picked her for the seat six months ago, but she later joined the BJP. A senior leader said, “Did I, or did I not keep telling you this was always going to happen?” She faces no contest.

Barely six months after being sent to the Rajya Sabha by Trinamool Congress chairperson Mamata Banerjee, Tollywood actress Koel Mallik, 44, is heading straight back to the Upper House, only this time on a BJP ticket.

On September 23, The Telegraph reported that sending Koel to the Rajya Sabha was a foregone conclusion for the BJP high command.

“Did I, or did I not keep telling you this was always going to happen?” asked

a senior in the BJP, on the condition of anonymity. “There was a lot of pressure on the state BJP leadership to send someone from within the saffron ranks. But these decisions are taken at the Amit Shah level, and the state’s objections are rarely heeded,” he added.

The day for the bypoll falls on Sashthi of Durga Puja, October 16 — but she is likely to win uncontested before that.

This summer, then chief minister Mamata handpicked the actor for a Rajya Sabha seat, bypassing battle-hardened leaders in favour of glamour and marquee value. Yet, following the May 4 results of the Assembly elections, Koel also joined the seemingly never-ending parade of those Samik Bhattacharya had famously called “bhalo (good) Trinamool”, packing their bags for either the BJP directly, or an allegedly saffron-backed Trinamool rebel faction.

On Sunday, even without a party joining ceremony for Koel, her name was announced by the BJP’s high command, two-and-a-half months after she resigned from the Upper House and met the BJP’s de facto Bengal rebel-manager-in-chief Bhupendra Yadav.

The term of this seat ends in April 2032.

Now, the BJP has eagerly welcomed Koel, pushing the party’s Upper House tally from Bengal’s 16 seats to a formidable seven from a mere three in July. For a party that routinely decries dynastic entitlement and celebrity parachute-drops, welcoming a movie star who defected from another party has raised more than a few ideological eyebrows.

Mamata loyalist Kunal Ghosh called the maneuver textbook “political hypocrisy”. He lamented that when parties roll out the red carpet for non-political glitterati only to face swift betrayals, it permanently destroys the ecosystem of trust for grassroots

loyalists.

Besides Koel, other Tollywood faces in Parliament who have betrayed Mamata since the election results include the controversial NCPI bloc’s Ghatal MP Dev Adhikari, Jadavpur MP Sayani Ghosh, Hooghly MP Rachna Banerjee, Medinipur MP June Malia, and Birbhum MP Satabdi Roy.

CPM central committee member Sujan Chakraborty dryly noted that former Trinamool elites now seemingly hold more clout in the BJP than actual, dyed-saffron-in-the-wool leaders, and that this should not surprise anyone.

The BJP shrugged off the brickbats. Rajya Sabha member Rahul Sinha told critics to first check their own dwindling relevance.