Mukul Roy to quit TMC: How Didi?s man Friday fell out of favour
Trinamool Congress(TMC) MP Mukul Roy?s announcement that he would quit the party, and his subsequent suspension, mark a significant shift in West Bengal politics. In what is the biggest defection in the TMC?s history, the party has lost its once-indispensable leader, whose influence had been waning over the past few years.
Addressing the media on 25 September, Roy talked of his contribution to the TMC, and announced that he would quit the party after the Durga Puja vacations.
?I was one of the signatories when the party was founded. I am announcing with a heavy heart that I will resign from the party?s working committee… Whatever I have to say, I will say it after Durga Puja. But I would like to mention that the people of Bengal don?t like political controversies during Durga Puja?, he said.
By Didi?s side
Roy, once a contractor and businessman, became close to Banerjee during the 1990s, working under the latter?s leadership when she was West Bengal Youth Congress president. He followed her when she quit the Congress to establish the TMC in 1998. The first signatory at the party?s formation, he eventually became the TMC supremo?s undisputed right-hand man.
A master strategist, he is believed to have been the brains behind the party?s rise in West Bengal, and is widely acknowledged as the foremost election manager for the 2011 assembly poll that ended the 34-year-old Left Front rule in the state, making Mamata Banerjee CM for the first time. When Mamata resigned as Railways Minister to take over her new responsibility, he was handed over that charge. Although removed in a cabinet reshuffle, he was brought back in 2012 for a six-month term.
This period marked Roy at his peak, recognised as the party?s face in Delhi. His poll-organisation skills would come to the party?s aid once again in 2014, when TMC was able to ward off the ?Modi wave?, grabbing thirty-four of the state?s forty-two seats.
The schism
The gulf between Roy and the West Bengal CM
started to develop in 2015, when the former is believed to have ?cooperated? with the CBI during during interrogation in the Saradha scam investigation. The situation took a turn for the worse thereafter, when his name got associated with the Narada sting too. Amidst rumours of his growing proximity with the Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP), Roy was removed from the post of TMC?s general secretary. He was rehabilitated, as vice-president, in 2016, but things were never the same again.
The resignation had been waiting in the ?wings for quite some time. There was no going back once Banerjee started delegating organisational responsibility to second-rung leaders like Arup Roy and Farhid Hakim. In the Rajya Sabha, Mukul Roy?s fall coincided with the ascension of Derek O?Brien, who also replaced the former as the Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Transport, Tourism and Culture.
No longer the same authority
Roy is a shadow of the political leader he once was. The last few months have witnessed reports that he has been negotiating with the BJP, which has led Banerjee to systematically reduced his influence within the party. His position on the Parliamentary Consultative Committee was taken by Manish Gupta, while he was also stripped of the responsibility of the TMC?s in-charge in Tripura, where, interestingly, all of the party?s legislators switched to the BJP. Banerjee?s decision to abolish the post of the party vice-president proved to be the final nail in the coffin.
Will TMC?s loss be BJP’s gain
It remains to be seen what the 63-year-old leader?s next course of action will be. Speculation is rife that his supporters may revive the Nationalist Trinamool Congress ? a front they had floated in the aftermath of the 2015 fallout. He would be a welcome addition to the BJP?s camp, should he choose to go in that direction. Despite its astonishingly rapid rise in the state, BJP is still far from reasonably challenging the ruling party?s clout. The saffron party continues to lack a popularly acceptable face in West Bengal. Besides, Roy can turn out to be the much-needed bridge bridge between the saffron party?s Hindutva politics, and the Bengali identity, which continues to see this form of politics as ?alien?to its culture. A lot hinges on the support he enjoys among other disgruntled Trinamool elements. West Bengal?s ruling party would undoubtedly survive Roy?s departure; the BJP, however, ?has a lot to gain.
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