Jharkhand unit of All India Forward Block (AIFB) is facing a split with the party state president expelling the Dhanbad Lok Sabha candidate Jayant Pandey and removing his father Janardan Pandey from the post of general secretary.
State AIFB president Aparna Sengupta held an emergency meeting of the state executive committee last evening and expelled Jayant for entering the contest without taking permission and also removed Janardan Pandey from the post of general secretary.
Nine of the 12 members of the state committee were present at the meeting. Janardan Pandey was one of those absent, Sengupta said.
Janardan Pandey, however, said it was an unanimous decision of the party to field Jayant from the Dhanbad seat and he had filed his nomination papers on April 4 for the April 24 elections.
Stating that Sengupta had no authority to sack a candidate or remove someone from the post of general secretary, Pandey said that the party would take disciplinary action against her.
"Party supreme Debabrata Biswas is coming to Dhanbad to campaign for Jayant. He will decide the fate of the candidate as well as the crisis created by an individual in the party," he said.
Sengupta, meanwhile, nominated Arun Mandal as the new general secretary of state unit.
She said that Forward Bloc would support AJSU party's Dhanbad candidate Hemlata S Mohan.
