MUKUL ROY VOWS TO DISLODGE MAMATA BANERJEE FROM POWER

‘We are comrades, we are not servants of anybody. She is the leader. She led, but our contribution should not be (overlooked),’ said the disgruntled leader from Bengal, who is likely to join the BJP soon.

Mukul Roy, one of the architects of West Bengal’s Trinamool Congress ( TMC), and for long the second-incommand to Mamata Banerjee in the state and at the Centre, said, now that he was out of the party, his primary aim was to dislodge her government from power. He said that the BJP—which sources say that he is joining soon— would win between 10 to 14 Lok Sabha seats from Bengal in 2019 and that Mamata Banerjee’s party would be restricted to 18 odd constituencies out of the state’s 42 seats. It won 34 Lok Sabha seats in 2014.

Roy also said that one of the reasons why he left his party, and subsequently resigned from the Rajya Sabha last week, was because he was not being treated “like a comrade” by the Bengal Chief Minister. “We are comrades, we are not servants of anybody. She is the leader. She led, but our contribution should not be (overlooked),” he said in a chat with this newspaper at his New Delhi residence on Wednesday. When pointed out that the usage of the word “servant” implied that he was being treated like a servant by Mamata Banerjee, he did not reply in the affirmative. Instead, he reiterated, “Well, I was feeling that we were not comrades.” He also claimed that there was immense dissatisfaction among Trinamool workers on the ground, thousands of whom were ready to join hands with him if he joined the BJP. He said that he was also in touch with several Trinamool MLAs and MPs.

COUNTERING TMC WITH BJP

If sources are to be believed, Mukul Roy is joining the BJP as early as Monday, 23 October, or sometime next week, and is likely to be the party’s main electoral strategist in Bengal. Roy, however, said that nothing was “finalised” yet, but admitted that he was “talking to the BJP” and was interested in joining the national party. He explained “that the change in West Bengal which came after 35 years in 2011” may have been led by Mamata Banerjee, but in that movement he too did “some serious work” and he was not happy at “the manner in which the present gov- ernment is going”. “Lives of political people are unsafe; they are being harassed like anything, which had not happened in Bengal earlier,” he said.

He added that it was not just he who was being harassed—he claimed that he was under constant surveillance—but also “the people who are opposing the Trinamool government”. “They may be workers of Trinamool, but they were taken into custody and given nar- cotic cases. If you visit the jails in Bengal, you’ll find thousands of Trinamool Congress people, who were arrested in narcotic cases,” he alleged.

“So, my first target will be to dislodge this government for the manner in which state power is being used. To curb that state power, another state power is required. That’s why I’m definitely interested in the BJP—to combat the present state power