A day after his former leader, Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, met Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thakeray, former Union Minister Mukul Roy joined the BJP in New Delhi on Friday evening.
With this, he ended all speculation about his political future, declaring, as he joined the BJP, that the party would soon be in power in the eastern State.
Union Minister for Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad, BJP general secretary in charge of West Bengal Kailash Vijayvargiya and Rajya Sabha member Swapan Dasgupta welcomed Mr. Roy into the party fold. After the ceremony, he met party president Amit Shah and Railway Minister Piyush Goyal for photo-ops.
“I sincerely believe that the Trinamool Congress would not have grown as it did without the support of the BJP. In 1998, when the TMC fought the polls for the first time, it was with the support of the BJP, and again in 1999, it was a part of the NDA and joined the government of Atal Behari Vajpayee. I’m proud to work under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah, and I believe that the BJP is secular. The people of Bengal are looking for an alternative and the BJP will soon be in power in the State as well,” he said.
Misgivings in BJP
There were misgivings in some quarters of the party because of Mr. Roy’s association with the Sharada chit fund scam to which he replied that he expected “the law to take its own course.”
Mr. Prasad underlined what the BJP was expecting from Mr. Roy, his organisational abilities in the State and his long experience of dealing with the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the political culture in West Bengal. “He [Mr. Roy] has been Union Minister for Shipping and Railways, a founding member of the Trinamool Congress, and a most notable feature of his political activism is his fight against the atrocities of the CPI(M) where the voice of dissent has no place,” he said.
The BJP, which has been keen to expand in West Bengal and has been floundering in the face of Ms Banerjee’s continued dominance is hoping that Mr. Roy’s knowledge of his former party’s organisational heft will help where several false starts haven’t.
