By Sujit Bhar
As was being speculated, super strategist Mukul Roy is back with Trinamool Congress, his original party, a party he helped Mamata Banerjee create. This afternoon he and his son Subhrangshu travelled to Trinamool Bhavan, on the eastern fringes of the city, in a massive convoy of cars. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee also arrived from her house in Kalighat. The formalities were over soon after and ghar-wapsi was complete.
Roy leaves the BJP, a party with which he had just won the Krishnanagar (North) Assembly seat.
This was another massive victory for Mamata, following the 213-77 drubbing that she had recently handed to the BJP at the polls. The BJP numbers are now even less impressive. This was also a major blow to the credibility of the state BJP unit as well as for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah.
The signs about and around Mukul were clear, from his skipping a major BJP Pradesh committee meeting to his wife, who is suffering from Covid, being visited by Mamata’s nephew Abhishek Banerjee in hospital. It is said that this created such a flutter that the very next day Prime Minister Narendra Modi had called Mukul up and had had a talk with him. Roy today turned out to be the Chanakya that he had been quietly termed as within Trinamool Congress (TMC) as well as in BJP circles.
As speculation rose to fever pitch, both BJP and TMC had maintained studied silence over the issue. However, certain soft comments from Mamata about Mukul, even during the election campaign, were slowly making things pretty clear. Just the other day TMC MP Saugata Roy had dropped a very clear hint, when he said: “There are many people who are in touch with Abhishek Banerjee and they want to come back. I feel they betrayed the party in a time of need… I feel the turncoats have to be divided in two parts, the softliners and hardliners.” The difference will be made as to what manner of comments the turncoats made after leaving the party, especially against Mamata. While Subhendu had used harsh words against Mamata, Mukul had never made that mistake.
The other theory was that Mamata Banerjee had played a brilliant card, allowing Mukul Roy to join the BJP as a Trojan Horse and had completely befuddled the disorganized state BJP unit as to what Didi was thinking.
This theory has now gained credence, especially in the day Mukul chose. Today, most state leaders, including Subhendu Adhikari and state BJP president Dilip Ghosh, are sitting in Delhi, trying to foist their several complaints before the national body.
Mukul, a national vice-president of the BJP (till he resigns), resigned from TMC on September 25, 2017. He was later suspended from the party for six years for anti-party activities. He also resigned from the Rajya Sabha membership on October 11, 2017.