After reaching New Delhi, senior TMC leader Mukul Roy expressed desire to join the BJP and meet with senior party leader and Union Home Minister Amit Shah. BJP says ‘not interested’
One of the founding members of the Trinamool Congress (TMC), Mukul Roy, has expressed a desire to join the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and meet Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
“I am a BJP legislator. I want to be with the BJP. The party has made arrangements for my stay here. I want to meet Amit Shah and speak to (party president) JP Nadda,” he told a Bengali news channel late on Tuesday evening.
The TMC MLA said that he was still a BJP legislator. Mukul Roy joined the BJP in 2017 after his reportedly strained relationship with the TMC’s top leadership. However, he returned to the TMC fold in 2019 after the West Bengal Assembly election.
Roy on Monday night travelled to New Delhi for “some personal work”, even as his family initially claimed that he was “missing” only to later accuse the BJP of indulging in dirty politics using the TMC leader who is unwell and not in the “right frame of mind”, reported the news agency PTI.
“I was not keeping well for quite some time, so I was away from politics. But right now, I am fine and would again be active in politics,” Roy said. He added he was 100 per cent confident that he would never be associated with the TMC.
Advising his son to join the BJP, Roy said, “He too should join the BJP as it would suit him best.”
Meanwhile, Roy’s son Subhrangshu has claimed that his father is “extremely unwell” and suffers from “dementia and Parkinson’s disease”.
Attacking the BJP over the issue, Subhrangshu said, “This is shameful that some people have stooped so low and are doing politics over my father’s visit to New Delhi. This is an attempt to malign the TMC and our party’s national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee”
“My father is not in the right frame of mind. I would request everyone not to do politics with an unwell person. After he went missing, I had also filed a police complaint last night,” Subhrangshu was quoted as saying by the news agency PTI.
Leader of Opposition (LoP) in West Bengal Suvendhu Adhikari said that the Bengal BJP was not interested in inducting Roy into the saffron camp.
Another BJP leader Sukanta Majumdar said, “BJP is nowhere in this. Mukul Roy left our party due to his political ideology. Neither did he discuss with me or any other BJP leader before leaving for Delhi.”
(With inputs from PTI)
