The mention of a certain Mukul Roy may draw awkward silence in Nabanna, the state secretariat of Bengal, but he is the new blue-eyed boy of Muralidhar Sen Lane in Kolkata.
Other than Dilip Ghosh, the president of the BJP state unit in West Bengal, and national secretary Rahul Sinha, the only person to get a cabinet in the BJP office in Bengal is the newly inducted member, Roy. Roy joined the BJP’s West Bengal state unit on November 3 in Delhi. He was not only given a grand reception by BJP workers and supporters at Kolkata airport but was received by organization secretary Subrata Chatterjee who had to had to rush back to Kolkata from the districts. A day after he joined the BJP, the Centre had accorded ‘Y+’ security cover with CRPF being entrusted with the task of safeguarding the former railway minister.
Though it is yet unclear in what position Mukul Roy will be in the organisation, given that he was the second in command in the Trinamool Congress, he will prove to be a heavyweight in Bengal.
While joining the BJP, Roy said that his first task was to ‘restore democracy in Bengal’. He also said,
Let me make it very clear that BJP president Amit Shah is my captain at the national level and Dilip Ghosh is my captain at the state level.
Known for being Mamata Banerjee’s ‘Chanakya’, Mukul Roy performed a wide range of roles when he was with the Trinamool Congress. He embarked on his political career under Banerjee when she was Youth Congress president in Bengal.
Trinamool Congress founder
Along with Mamata Banerjee, Roy founded the Trinamool Congress party on December 17, 1997. Until his recent fallout with the West Bengal Chief Minister, he was the number two figure in the party and served as the party’s chief poll strategist. He is credited with bringing the TMC to power in Bengal in 2011, ending 34 years of Left Front rule.
Trinamool’s face in Delhi
In April 2006, Roy was elected to Rajya Sabha and served in various parliamentary committees. In April 2008, he was appointed his party’s all-India general secretary. A year later, he became MoS (Shipping). When he was appointed as Railway Minister in 2012 in the UPA government, he did away with the fare hike introduced by his predecessor. However, he lost the portfolio after TMC exited from the UPA coalition.
Saradha chit fund scam and Narada sting case
After the CBI questioned Roy in the political scandal caused by the collapse of the Ponzi scheme run by Saradha group, he fell out of favour with Mamata Banerjee and the distance grew when his name came up in the Narada sting case. Banerjee removed him from the post of the party’s general secretary in 2015 but rehabilitated him as its vice-president a year later.
Fallout with Mamata Banerjee
Though Roy was given the charge of the party’s expansion outside of West Bengal, he was stripped of that responsibility in Tripura when all Trinamool MLAs in the state joined the BJP, making the latter the main opposition in the Left-ruled state. Banerjee also dropped him from the parliamentary consultative committee of the home ministry in September 2017 and subsequently abolished the post of the party’s vice-president that he held.
With over 20 years of experience, Mukul Roy is expected to strengthen BJP’s electioneering and ground-level organisation in West Bengal where the party is hoping to make grounds.
