Mukul Roy Dumps The BJP, Returns 'Home'
By A Special Correspondent
First publised on 2021-06-12 07:00:03
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The BJP gave all it had in the West Bengal elections. Yet it could not manage to dislodge Mamata Banerjee. In the run-up to the elections, the party had snared many TMC leaders and BJP big-wigs had made snide remarks that pisi-bhaipo (Mamata and her nephew Abhishek Banerjee) would be all alone after the elections. But defeat must be teaching many lessons to the BJP. Just after the elections, many middle level leaders who had left the TMC started making attempts to rejoin the party. They appealed to Mamata Banerjee to forgive them and accept them back. It was a sign of things to come. On Friday, the BJPs earliest and biggest catch, Mukul Roy, dumped it and returned to the TMC fold. This is likely to open the floodgates and as Mamata said, there will be many more homecomings.
Mukul Roy was one of the founding members of the Trinamool Congress and had been Mamata Banerjee's blue-eyed boy. He had served as a Union minister. But his relations with the party started souring in 2014-14 and he was suspended in 2017. He joined the BJP in November 2017. It is rumoured that he returned to the TMC as he was overlooked for the post of the leader of the opposition (LoO) in the WB assembly after the elections. The BJP had made its recent prized catch Suvendhu Adhikari, who had defeated Mamata Banerjee from Nandigram, as LoO.
But the family ties between the Roys and the Banerjees are very old and strong. Recently, when Mukul Royâs wife was in hospital, Abhishek Banerjee has visited her and had said that political differences cannot come in the way of family ties and he is very affectionate of kakima (aunt) as he referred to her. It seems Mukul Roy was feeling that his political career was going nowhere in the BJP and hence he made the switch. The BJP should have given him a place in the Union cabinet after the stellar performance by the party in the 2019 general elections as he is an experienced politician. Suvendhu Adhikari's entry and subsequent rapid rise was the last straw for Roy. The BJP will now face many more reverse defections.
