'BJP is doomed in West Bengal': Former state chief Tathagata Roy fires salvo post bypolls

After TMC secured a humungous victory in the West Bengal bypolls, BJP's former state president Tathagata Roy predicted that his party can never recover from its downward trajectory. While the by-elections to Dinhata and Santipur were held as Nisith Pramanik and Jagannath Sarkar chose to retain their Lok Sabha seats, the poll in Khardaha and Gosaba was necessitated by the death of TMC's winning candidates Kajal Sinha and Jayanta Naskar. While TMC won all these seats with staggering margins, BJP candidates forfeited their deposits in Dinhata, Gosaba and Khardaha. 

Roy who has served as the Governor of Tripura and Meghalaya in the past opined, "Barring a few exceptions, most of West Bengal BJP’s 18 MPs and 77 MLAs did not go and stand beside supporters. Suvendu Adhikari was one such exception. Others visited districts surrounded by security and pontificated that to be in BJP one must do tyag-tapasya". He also blamed BJP's West Bengal in-charge Kailash Vijayvargiya, co-in-charge Arvind Menon, ex-state chief Dilip Ghosh and joint general secretary (organization) Shiv Prakash for the induction of undesirable elements in the saffron party. 

The exodus of BJP MLAs after WB polls

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. Speculation about Mukul Roy's political future started doing the rounds after Nandigram MLA Suvendu Adhikari pipped him to the Leader of the Opposition's post. While the then BJP national vice-president 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. 

Finally, Roy and his son rejoined TMC in the presence of CM Mamata Banerjee and her nephew on June 11. After a brief lull, Tanmoy Ghosh who won in Bishnupur on a BJP ticket switched allegiance to TMC on August 30. Biswajit Das and Soumen Roy, the sitting BJP legislators from Bagda and Kaliaganj respectively followed suit.

In another blow to BJP, Raiganj MLA Krishna Kalyani joined TMC in the presence of state Commerce Minister Partha Chatterjee on October 27. Addressing a public rally recently, TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee claimed that BJP will be wiped out from West Bengal the day when his party opens its doors to all leaders willing to jump ship. With the bypoll results,  BJP's strength has now reduced to 70 seats.