Trinamool Congress leader and former West Bengal minister Udayan Guha was arrested on Wednesday, 17 June from his residence in Phoolbagan, Kolkata, making him the third member of the previous Mamata Banerjee-led cabinet to be taken into custody since the new Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government assumed office. While authorities had not formally specified charges at the time of arrest, sources indicated the action is linked to cases of post-poll violence in Cooch Behar district following the 2021 West Bengal Assembly elections.

The Arrest and Charges

Police had reportedly been attempting to locate Guha for some time before detaining him at his Phoolbagan home. According to a source in the state police, he faces accusations of involvement in post-poll violence that erupted in his native Cooch Behar district in the aftermath of the 2021 Assembly polls — the election that handed Mamata Banerjee her third consecutive term as Chief Minister. The arrest is believed to be connected to cases registered against him in relation to those incidents.

A Pattern of Arrests Since BJP Took Charge

The detention of Udayan Guha follows a rapid sequence of arrests targeting former ministers of the Trinamool Congress-led government since Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari and the BJP took charge on 9 May.

Former state Fire Services Minister Sujit Bose was the first to be arrested last month by officials of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for alleged involvement in a multi-crore municipalities' job scam. On 9 June, former Correctional Services Minister Ujjal Biswas was taken into custody on charges of illegally hoarding state government relief material. Guha is now the third former cabinet member to face arrest within weeks of the political transition.

Who Is Udayan Guha

Udayan Guha served as the minister in charge of the North Bengal Development Department in the previous Mamata Banerjee cabinet. He is the son of the late Kamal Guha, a prominent All India Forward Bloc (AIFB) leader from Cooch Behar who served in the Left Front cabinet in West Bengal for over two decades.

Udayan began his own legislative career under the AIFB banner, winning the Dinhata Assembly constituency in Cooch Behar for the first time in 2011. He subsequently switched to the Trinamool Congress (TMC) ahead of the 2016 Assembly elections and retained the Dinhata seat as a TMC candidate. He continued as the MLA from Dinhata until the 2026 Assembly polls, where he was defeated by BJP's Ajay Ray by a margin of over 17,000 votes.

What This Means Going Forward

The back-to-back arrests of former Trinamool ministers signal an aggressive post-election accountability drive by the new BJP administration in West Bengal. Critics from the Trinamool Congress are likely to frame these actions as political targeting, while the BJP government maintains they reflect lawful enforcement of pending cases. With formal charges yet to be publicly detailed in Guha's case, the legal proceedings in the coming days will be closely watched by both political camps.