Mukul Roy: West Bengal's 'Chanakya' who mastered defections, outlived alliances

Mukul Roy, who was born in Kanchrapara in North 24 Parganas district in 1954, began his political career with the Youth Congress in the 1980s. When Mamata Banerjee broke away from the Congress to form the Trinamool Congress in 1998, Roy was among the earliest to follow.

Kolkata: Mukul Roy, the backroom strategist once hailed as the 'Chanakya of West Bengal politics', died early on Monday after prolonged illness, ending a career which saw him both engineer and embody defections.

One of the founding members of the TMC, his passing ends one of the most layered political journeys of post-Left West Bengal.

Roy, who was born in Kanchrapara in North 24 Parganas district in 1954, began his political career with the Youth Congress in the 1980s. When Mamata Banerjee broke away from the Congress to form the Trinamool Congress in 1998, Roy was among the earliest to follow.

Soft-spoken and meticulous organiser, he avoided rhetorical flourish. His domain was arithmetic, booth committees, district equations, ticket distribution and alliance management. Within a few years, he emerged as the party's general secretary and principal troubleshooter in Delhi.

Elected to the Rajya Sabha in 2006 and re-elected later, Roy became the TMC's leader in the Upper House in 2009. In the UPA-2 government, he served first as Minister of State for Shipping and later as railway minister in 2012. But his real theatre was West Bengal.

After the TMC's historic victory in 2011 ended the Left's uninterrupted 34-year rule, Roy oversaw an unprecedented wave of political crossovers. Opposition-run municipalities and zilla parishads flipped almost overnight. Congress and CPI(M) leaders, sensing a new centre of gravity, drifted towards the ruling camp.

Until then, West Bengal prided itself on ideological steadfastness. Floor-crossing was dismissed as a vice of other states. Under Roy's watch, however, defections became a method and even a spectacle. Councillors marched under new flags, MLAs appeared at choreographed press conferences, and numerical dominance was publicly staged.

His strategy earned him the moniker 'Chanakya of West Bengal politics'. To some, Roy symbolised ruthless pragmatism in an age of ideological fluidity. To others, he epitomised opportunism. But few disputed his organisational brilliance.

By the 2014 Rajya Sabha polls and through successive local body elections, Roy's backroom manoeuvres had become integral to TMC's expansion. The party's organisational muscle bore his imprint.

His ascent was, however, also overshadowed by controversies. His name surfaced in the Saradha chit fund case and the Narada sting operation, allegations he consistently denied. Simultaneously, equations within the TMC shifted as power centralised further around Banerjee.

As the general secretary of the TMC till 2015, he was de facto number two in the party. However, following differences with the party, he was removed from the post, only later to be appointed as vice president from which he resigned.

By 2017, relations with his one-time mentor Banerjee worsened further. Roy went on to quit the party he had helped form, and joined the BJP. The architect of TMC's expansion was now with its principal adversary. It was a defection loaded with symbolism.

In the BJP, Roy carried his finely honed playbook. Ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and the 2021 assembly polls, he emerged as the saffron party's key organiser in West Bengal. Several TMC leaders followed him. The BJP's tally of 18 out of 42 Lok Sabha seats in 2019 was, party leaders claimed, partly the result of his recruitment drive. In 2020, he was appointed the national vice president of the BJP.

"The architect of defections had become the architect of counter-defections," a senior TMC leader once remarked.

Roy was elected MLA from Krishnanagar Uttar on a BJP ticket in 2021. But within weeks of the assembly results, which saw Banerjee secure a resounding third term, Roy returned to the TMC fold, describing it as his "first and last home".

By then, however, the once-indomitable strategist was not even a shadow of his past and had receded from the political battlefield.

Roy's health deteriorated sharply after 2021. He resigned as chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, citing ill health. Public appearances dwindled. Multiple hospitalisations followed.

For decades, he had redrawn West Bengal's political map through midnight meetings and silent negotiations. Now he was absent from the arena he once dominated.

Though he rejoined the TMC, he never regained the centrality he had once commanded. New power centres had emerged.

The Calcutta High Court disqualified him under the anti-defection law. The decision was later stayed by the Supreme Court. In a twist steeped in irony, the law he had long navigated and, critics said, weaponised during his prime, now turned on him.

In the 15th and 16th West Bengal assemblies, defections from the Left and Congress became a defining feature of politics, reflecting a culture Roy had helped institutionalise.

He preferred the shadows to the stage, negotiation to noise, numbers to slogans. He was rarely the face of a movement, but often its architect.

Roy's life mirrors West Bengal's post-2011 political churn -- the erosion of rigid ideological lines, defections, the rise of tactical realignments, and the dominance of survival over sentiment.

With Roy's death, West Bengal's political theatre lost one of its most skilled backstage directors -- a man who lived in the shadows of power, engineered its shifts, and exited quietly, as he had often operated.