6 months after rejoining TMC, turncoat MLA Mukul Roy predicts BJP's win in civic polls

6 months after rejoining TMC, turncoat MLA Mukul Roy predicted the victory of his erstwhile party BJP in the upcoming elections to 111 civic bodies in West Bengal. He made this comment while speaking to the media during his visit to Bolpur in Birbhum district on Friday. Attempting damage control later, he said, “The TMC is BJP and vice versa". He was then led by TMC's Birbhum district president Anubrata Mondal who was reportedly very upset. 

Left red-faced after Roy's faux pas, WB TMC secretary general Partha Chatterjee was quoted by PTI as saying, “Mukul Roy is ailing and that was probably the reason for his incoherent statements. He is not a functionary of our party. Let’s not attach importance to what he says". Earlier in September also, the BJP-turned-TMC leader made a similar gaffe by affirming that the saffron party will emerge victorious in the bypolls. 

Mukul Roy rejoins TMC

An accused in the Narada sting operation case, Mukul Roy had resigned from TMC in September 2017 and joined BJP two months later. Subsequently, he was made the national vice-president of the BJP in September 2020. While he won the Krishnanagar Uttar seat in Nadia district, his son Subhrangshu who joined the party in May 2019 was defeated from the Bijpur seat from where he was the incumbent MLA. On May 2, TMC sprung a surprise by decisively winning the West Bengal Assembly election by bagging 213 seats whereas BJP could win in only 77 constituencies.

After Nandigram MLA Suvendu Adhikari pipped Mukul Roy to the Leader of the Opposition's post, speculation about the latter's political future started doing the rounds. Thereafter, Roy's son stirred controversy after writing on social media that one should do self-introspection before criticising the government which has come to power with people's support. Finally, Roy and his son rejoined TMC on June 11 in the presence of CM Mamata Banerjee and her nephew. 

"Mukul Roy has come back to his own party. TMC has come back consecutively 3rd time with people's mandate. Mukul Roy's decision to come back is a very good decision. He was not well in BJP, it is good for him to come back to the party," the TMC supremo observed on the occasion. Since the 2021 WB polls, 4 other BJP MLAs apart from Roy- Tanmoy Ghosh (Bishnupur),  Biswajit Das (Bagda), Soumen Roy (Kaliaganj) and Krishna Kalyani (Raiganj) have also switched allegiance to TMC.