The old-timers of the BJP, who were vocal against opening the door for TMC MLAs before the election, got a shot in the arm today as Mukul Roy went back to his original party along with his son Subhransu Roy.
One of these old-timers is Tathagata Roy, a former governor. He has quoted late Harekrishna Konar to claim: “By defecating and urinating, human body does not become weak, it becomes strong.”
After Mukul Roy quit TMC in 2017, he turned into an important leader of the state BJP and worked in tandem with Kailas Vijayvargiya, the man in charge of Bengal on behalf of the central leadership. The duo formed a rival group in the party to check Dilip Ghosh, the president of Bengal unit. Roy was made national vice president of the party months before the Bengal assembly elections.
No doubt, Mukul Roy’s ‘ghar wapasi’ has come as a major setback for central leadership of the BJP. Mukul Roy is one of those few turncoats who have won in the recent elections. It is not clear whether Roy will resign from his MLA post immediately. If he does, he can be rehabilitated as a Rajya Sabha member by the TMC. Roy is one of the architects of the TMC that broke away from Congress in 1998. Roy’s son was, however, defeated in the election.
That Mukul Roy could go back to TMC has been speculated over the last one year. It was fuelled further recently when Abhishek Banerjee went to see Roy’s ailing wife Krishna Roy in hospital and described her as a ‘motherly figure’ to him. Proving the speculation right, today Mukul Roy met Mamata Banerjee at her residence at Kalighat, and then went to the Trinamool Bhawan, the headquarters of the ruling party of Bengal. Later Mamata Banerjee and Abhishek Banerjee went there too.
Mukul Roy and his son joined TMC in presence of Mamata and Abhishek. Neither Mamata elaborated on why Mulul was inducted, nor Mukul explained why he left BJP. He just said he would explain it in detail later. Mamata Banerjee let the media know that Roy will now play the role he earlier used to play. She claimed after returning to TMC Roy would ‘regain his mental peace’ now. She said more people from the BJP would join her party. But she also made it clear that ‘those who betrayed us just before the election will not be welcome’.
Most of the MLAs who joined BJP leaving the TMC are now eager to go back to their original party. Some like Sonali Guha and Dipendu Biswas have already filed their applications, while it is being speculated that others like Rajib Banerjee, a former minister, may soon follow suit. However, some who left TMC to join the BJP just before the election like Shilbhadra Dutta and Baisakhi Dalmia have made it clear that they will not leave the BJP. Baisakhi has described the ilk of Mukul as ‘garbage’.
(The author Diptendra Raychaudhuri is a senior journalist based in Kolkata. He has a wide range of experience in covering West Bengal politics and has authored several books)