What lies ahead for TMC’ stop man?

He soared into the headlines for reasons savoury and unsavoury: In 2011, when he became minister of state for railways, and in 2015 because of his alleged association with the Saradha chit fund scam and the Narada tapes.

Now Mukul Roy, one of the founding members of the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC), is back in the headlines for different reasons. The 63year-old former parliamentarian from Kanchrapara, who belongs to a non-political family but rose quickly in politics, quit the party he once founded following as witch from the Congress, and certified the BJP as “non-communal”, leading to his suspension from the TMC. After submitting his resignation from the Rajya Sabha to Vice-President M Venkaiah Naidu (also chairman of the Upper House of Parliament), Roy went on to publicly admit his distaste for a party which he says is a “one-man show”. “I feel in a party everybody should be a comrade and not a servant. And this kind of behaviour is common in every one-man political outfit. One-man politics is bad for every party in the country,” he said, adding that “dynastic politics is there all over India” (sic).

Although Roy didn’t hit out at TMC chief Mamata Banerjee directly, it was apparent he was unhappy about the internal functioning of the party, specifically, the rise of Abhishek Banerjee, the West Bengal CM’s nephew, who is projected as the future face of the TMC.

After all, when the TMC was founded in December 1997, Roy was the first signatory and was second in-command, after Banerjee.

Son of a railway employee, Roy was born in an “ordinary family” and attended Harneet High School. Later he did his graduation in Chemistry from Rishi Ban kim Chandra College in Naihati.

It was in Roy’s college days that Partha Chatterjee, the state’s education and parliamentary affairs minister, who is a close confidant of Banerjee, introduced him to the TMC supremo. Banerjee then was president of the Youth Congress in West Bengal. After Banerjee split with the Congress to build the TMC, which soon became the largest opposition party in the state, Roy sided with her. Afterwards, he went on to march with Banerjee during the Nandigram and Singur crises, which ended the 34year-long Left Front regime in West Bengal. As a reward for his tact and organisational capabilities, Roy was made general secretary of the party in 2008. If the BJP has Amit Shah to secure its victory, the TMC had Roy to play the same role. Known as the party’s chief poll strategist and often referred to as Chanakya in internal circles, Roy was instrumental in securing the TMC’s victory in 2011. When Banerjee resigned as railways minister after becoming West Bengal chief minister in 2011, he was nominated by her for the office he got.

But things started going badly after the Saradha scam surfaced. As the CBI and the ED tightened their noose on several TMC leaders, including Roy, for their alleged involvement in money laundering on a mammoth scale, Roy went to New Delhi and spent some days meeting politicians, mainly from the BJP. This didn’t please Banerjee and other TMC leaders.

The first speculation that Roy, along with a group of TMC leaders, would quit the party emerged in 2015. He and some party leaders then had approached the Election Commission of India on floating a party called the Nationalist TMC. Not only was Roy sacked from his post of general secretary, but he also lost favour with Banerjee.

Later, though he was appointed TMC vice-president in an appeasement effort, Banerjee abolished the post altogether after learning that Roy had plansto quit the TMC. He was expelled for six years from the party in September. What Roy is planning is not known. Will he side with the BJP, which he calls “non-communal”? Or will he float a party? Or revive the Nationalist TMC to further his political career? On neutral ground now, Roy kept his relations with all the major political parties, including the CPI(M). While being in the throes of leaving the TMC, he has left enough room to come back to the party by exculpating Mamata, saying she was innocent of the Saradha and Narada scams.