oppn parties Mukul Roy Dumps The BJP, Returns 'Home'

News Snippets

  • SP drops two candidates owing allegiance to Azam Khan from Rampur and Moradabad
  • In Assam, a controversy erupted after a picture of UPPL leader Benjamin Basumatary, lying on a stack of Rs 500 notes circulated on social media. UPPL is an ally of the BJP
  • AAP's Jalandhar-West MP Sushil Kumar Rinku joins the BJP. He was the only AAP Lok Sabha MP
  • Supreme Court dismisses Centre's plea to review its 2023 verdict in the PMLA case
  • Close save for passengers as they remain unhurt after the wings of two planes graze at Kolkata airport. Pilots derostered and inquiry ordered by DGCA
  • Bengal BJP leader Dilip Ghosh gets notice from the EC as well as the BJP for making ugly remarks about Mamata Banerjee's parentage
  • Sadanand Vasanth Date, who faught terrorists in the 26/11 attack and was awarded the Preisent's Police medal, has been appointed the head of the NIA
  • Centre will borrow Rs 7.5L cr in the first six months of FY25, nearly 50% of the target for the full year
  • 25 stocks, including SBI, will see same day trade settlements from today in the world's fastest settlement mode in both BSE and NSE
  • Stocks recover smartly on Wednesday: Sensex rises 526 points to 72996 and Nifty 118 points to 22123
  • Tennis: Rohan Bopanna-Matthew Ebden reached the semifinals of the Miami Open
  • IPL: records tumble as SRH beat MI in a high-scoring match. SRH score 277/3 with 18 sixes and Mumbai score 246 with 20 sixes to fall short by 31 runs. Atotal of 38 sixes, highest in an IPL match were hit and both teams combined to score 523 runs, the highest aggregate in an IPL match
  • Amul will launch fresh milk in the US
  • IPL: RCB beat Punjab by 4 wickets as Kohli and Karthik shine with the bat
  • India strongly objected to German foreign office remarks over the arrest of delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, called it "biased assumptions"
Delhi Lt Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena says government cannot be run from jail, hints at President's Rule in the capital ////// In a dangerous incident, the wings of two planes grazed while taxiing on the runway at Kolkata airport, all passengers were safe but DGCA ordered an inquiry and the pilots were derostered
oppn parties
Mukul Roy Dumps The BJP, Returns 'Home'

By A Special Correspondent
First publised on 2021-06-12 07:00:03

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 Roy’s 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.