The rise, fall and rise of Mukul Roy

A small-town boy who made it too big to be ignored. An above-average political strategist. A backroom boss. A super-efficient election manager. A cool customer who never forgets a slight. Mukul Roy, the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) new rising star in Bengal, is all of these and then some.

Roy was the archetypal humble middle-class boy who dreamt big. He did not display the drawing power – charisma, oratorical skills or personality – that is a must to make a splash in electoral politics. But he demonstrated, even early in life, the tenacity to work very hard to create a space for himself. And he strategised and prepared himself for the most tortuous path in politics – backroom operations.

He knew it would bring him no glamour, no instant recognition, no presence on television or newspapers, but it may, he must have realised, earn him real power one day if he played his cards well. And played he well. From an apparently insignificant Trinamool Congress (TMC) worker, he soon became part of party supremo Mamata Banerjee's close circle. He rose to the much-envied position of being Banerjee's all-weather aide. Ultimately, however, it was this tremendous power that led to him losing that first-round of the 'not-so-friendly' match with Banerjee.

How? Roy's first tiff with his party chief began when an iconic Bengali magazine did a cover story on Roy. Since power attracts, among other things, media, it was not an unusual development. But the headline of the cover article, ‘Bongeshwar’ (The King of Bengal) – people close to both Roy and Banerjee say – triggered the first spark of the conflict between the duo. Banerjee apparently was looking for an opportunity, and Roy's alleged role in the Saradha chit fund scam offered an excuse. Roy was promptly sidelined. Later, however, Roy's formal exit from the TMC was formalised on a different issue.

But cool as he is, he bided his time for the second round, which he knew would prove to be even fiercer. He braced himself for attacks – stinging and deadly – but never thought of surrendering to the TMC establishment. After being forced to quit the party on September 25, 2017 for meeting then National Democratic Alliance (NDA) finance minister Arun Jaitley and Bharatiya Janata Party leader Kailash Vijayvargiya, he also resigned his Rajya Sabha seat in October that year. People misread the move, thinking that he had squandered his chances of a great career, especially after occupying the full Cabinet post as the railway minister.

The perception was that Roy's political career had ended tragically. But he seemed nonchalant and even returned to the TMC for a short while before turning away for ever. Actually, he needed more time to ensure that his support base had been secured.

Second innings

Gradually, it became known that Roy was ready to join the BJP anytime. But he launched a new outfit, the Nationalist Trinamool Congress Party, with one of his aides, Amitabha Mazumdar, as its president. The party's office was located in Dinhata in North Bengal – about 700 km north of Kolkata. It was another subterfuge to mislead his detractors, who began to rejoice at the apparent political harakiri he had committed.

But Roy kept low and no political pundit was able to predict at that point that his disappearance from the limelight was only an organised retreat to keep his bargaining chips in tact when he joined the BJP on November 3, 2017. What were they? Even his detractors acknowledge that Roy is among those rare political managers in Bengal who personally know almost every party activist in each block of the state.

The stars of the BJP leadership visit West Bengal, address the crowds and go away again. But Mukul Roy is always present among his men. He knows the import of local demands in every district and the way they need to be nurtured or quelled as the situation demands. So, when most BJP and Left leaders were scandalised about 34 per cent of the electorate not being allowed to vote in the last Panchayat elections in Bengal, Roy, his close aides say, did not make much noise about it. For, he knew that it was the much-awaited chink in the TMC's armour and laid out an elaborate trap and settled down waiting for his prey.

The chink grew unmanageably big for Banerjee in the general elections as village after village rebelled against TMC workers who tried to stop people from voting. And central security forces were there to ensure that anti-TMC votes were polled. Even after the elections, while everybody was scared of retaliatory TMC violence, Roy knew how to handle it. He successfully contained violence in pockets where the BJP was strong.

Despite initial opposition from a section of old-timers in the BJP – since he was outsider and that too with a history involving the Saradha and Narada cases – he could not be ignored. For, he is one of those who helped re-engineer Bengal's voting pattern twice in recent history – first in 2011, when the TMC wiped out the Communist Party of India (Marxist)'s 34-year-long rule in the state and then in 2019, when the BJP – almost non-existent in Bengal – captured almost half the electorate by winning 18 out of the 42 Parliament seats in the state.

Old playbook, new turf

Political observers are of the opinion that Roy's humble beginning was somewhat similar to Banerjee's, which makes them both skilled street fighters. But a close comparison shows they are two different people who came together because of the circumstances post 1977 defeat of the Congress. Old-school Congress veterans were too set in their ways as leaders of the ruling elite. Although it was the first convincing defeat of the Congress party all over the country, political inertia had set in the Bengal unit of the party irreversibly. Banerjee, among the aggressive youth leaders, felt suffocated in this atmosphere and nurtured a plan to launch a new outfit to fight the new power centre, the Left Front.

Roy was around 24 at the time and was looking for his place under the sun. Growing up in Kanchrapara, a small suburban town about 57 km off Kolkata in North 24 Parganas district, Roy, ironically, had a Left background. Both his parents, Jugal Nath and Rekha Roy, were CPI(M) activists. He also began his journey as a CPI(M) worker. But soon he came under the influence of a local Congress leader, Mrinal Singha Roy, who took him to Somen Mitra, a Bengal Congress giant who is now the state Congress president.

But Roy was never happy. Rather, he felt claustrophobic – in his own words – because of the strict hierarchy and lethargy of the juggernaut that called itself a party. Singha Roy then took him to Banerjee, who had by then openly rebelled against the leadership. Roy went to Banerjee's Kalighat residence and the rest is history. But history has its own twists and turns.

In 1998, Mamata Banerjee's party was launched and Roy was one of the proud founding members. But leadership roles always eluded him in the initial years. He was the supreme leader's most trusted aide, but nothing more. Soon, he spotted his opportunity and gave more time and energy to building up a base for the party in the districts rather than chasing after name and fame.

It paid off in 2006 when Banerjee began her mega movement in Singur, a sleepy hamlet in Hooghly district – about 50 km off Kolkata – where the Tatas had planned to build their first Nano factory. There were misgivings among the farmers about the way the state government was handling the land acquisition issue there, which grew into a mass movement. But it was very localised till then. The TMC took up the cause of the farmers and triggered the fall of the Left government in Bengal.

The Nandigram uprise followed Singur and things begun happening so fast that a major portion of even those who joined the movement in the initial stages could not keep pace. Mamata Banerjee came to power in 2011. The TMC became the ruling party in Bengal. But there was no one to manage the party. In fact, till then, the TMC was a loose confederacy of different groups – including some Left and Left radicals, too – and individuals. The party felt the need for someone to handle the backroom operations and build a coherent unit and only Mukul Roy fitted the bill.

Roy, who had by now completed his groundwork, kept the old faithfuls as the base and opened up for those who wanted to switch camps. He was criticised for the easy solution, but it worked fine for the TMC. Again, post-2017, in his new avatar as a BJP leader in Bengal, Mukul Roy is using his old strategies to induct TMC deserters to strengthen the base of the BJP. His critics say that this is not the Saffron party's style, but Roy has been given almost a free hand to choose the deserters. Already, some of them like Arjun Singh have proved to be useful.

Although there's no guarantee that the deserters will remain with him through rain and hailstorm, Roy has emerged victorious, for now.

(Debjyoti Chakraborty is a senior journalist)