BJP national vice-president Mukul Roy returns to Trinamul: Return a precursor, predicts Didi

Move marks not just another victory for Mamata Banerjee over the saffron party but also an attempt to create a national momentum against India’s ruling dispensation

Mukul Roy hugs Abhishek Banerjee in the presence of chief minister Mamata Banerjee at Trinamul Bhavan in Calcutta on Friday: Telegraph picture

Devadeep Purohit   |   TT  |   Calcutta   |  12.06.21: BJP national vice-president Mukul Roy returned to Trinamul on Friday with his son and former MLA Subhrangshu, marking not just another victory for Mamata Banerjee over the BJP but also an attempt to create a national momentum against India’s ruling dispensation.

The Roys were feeling marginalised in the BJP and are expected to enjoy some prominence in Trinamul. However, a 67-year-old and ailing Mukul may not have much to offer the robust Trinamul organisation, helmed by the party’s all-India general secretary Abhishek Banerjee.

Still, the homecoming by the party’s former second-in-command is significant in the context of both state and national politics. Mukul’s return does not reflect merely an attempt by Mamata to create a counter-narrative about the BJP in Bengal or a humanitarian gesture to an old comrade.

“This (Mukul’s return) will have an impact beyond Bengal.... Just see the repercussion at the national level,” Mamata told The Telegraph in the evening.

The impact may not be felt immediately as the next big tests before the BJP — the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls next year and the Lok Sabha elections of 2024 — are still some distance away. However, the twin blows Mamata has dealt Narendra Modi-Amit Shah, by trouncing their party in the Bengal polls and then defeating them in their own defection game, seem to have created the sort of anti-BJP momentum the Opposition was desperately looking for.

“I sent Prashant Kishor to meet (NCP leader) Sharad Pawar this afternoon and they had a very good meeting,” Mamata said in the evening.

Many are looking at that meeting as signifying Mamata’s launch of a plan to challenge Modi by bringing all the anti-BJP groups together before the crucial contests of 2022 and 2024.

Taking the Narada-accused Mukul back may also help Mamata expose the BJP’s vindictive politics if the CBI now acts against him as it has against Firhad Hakim, Subrata Mukherjee, Madan Mitra and Sovan Chatterjee.

“If Mukulda is arrested, she can always highlight how he had been spared as long as he was in the BJP. Besides, she can also raise the demand for the arrest of Suvendu Adhikari if Mukulda is arrested,” a source said.

At a news conference and during her discussions with aides, Mamata repeatedly stressed that she had facilitated Mukul’s return primarily because of his poor health, appearing to imply she was offering a long-time associate the benefit of superannuation.

It was clear she hadn’t any great expectations from Mukul when she said, in answer to the question how the returning politician might strengthen her party, that Trinamul was already a powerful party.

After Mukul joined the BJP in November 2017, having quit Trinamul about two months earlier amid differences with Mamata and heir apparent Abhishek, a new political game that was alien to Bengal’s culture had begun in the state.

Following the mandate handed down to him by his masters in Delhi, Mukul began playing the game from Day One, floating the theory that over 100 Trinamul MLAs were willing to join the BJP anytime.

His claims — later parroted by scores of BJP leaders including Prime Minister Modi and home minister Shah — helped the BJP spin a narrative that Trinamul was about to collapse like a house of cards.

With the power of propaganda triggering a series of defections from Trinamul, a trend that continued till this year’s Assembly elections, the BJP went to the voting booths hoping this strategy of “inorganic growth” would be enough to dethrone Mamata.

Eventually, it was Mamata’s charisma and deft poll planning that prevailed, handing the BJP a crushing defeat it seems not to have recovered from yet.

But a broader view of the Mamata-Modi battle, counting from Mukul’s original defection and taking in the BJP’s sensational Lok Sabha poll performance from the state, would suggest that a corner was turned on Friday when the chief minister paid the rival party back in its own coin.

“He (Mukul) has come back to his roots today. He could not work in the BJP…. One cannot be in that party,” Mamata said, flanked by Mukul and a host of other Trinamul leaders at the news conference in Trinamul Bhavan, off EM Bypass.

Mukul corroborated Mamata: “I couldn’t stay in the BJP…. I’m back in my old party because it wasn’t possible for me to stay in the BJP.”

When reporters asked the chief minister whether more people from the BJP would join Trinamul in the coming days, Mamata made it clear that the list of potential returnees was long and that the “soft-liners” would be inducted.

Juxtaposing Mamata’s comments with Mukul’s leaves little doubt that the chief minister has, at least for now, turned the narrative almost 180 degrees by projecting the BJP as the party likely to fall apart in the state.

Trinamul sources said that at least 12 to 15 MLAs were set to dump the BJP and join Trinamul by July 2, when the Assembly session begins in the state. The trickle will soon turn into a deluge, a source insisted, adding that the BJP’s strength in the Assembly would fall significantly from its poll tally of 77 (which has become 76 with Mukul’s desertion).

A Trinamul insider said the purported large-scale defections from the BJP would have happened anyway, and that Mukul’s return had just hastened the process. He said Mukul’s utility was unlikely to go beyond this.