Nephew Abhishek Banerjee's Ambition May Have Cost Mamata Her Trusted Lieutenant And TMC A Crisis Manager

The exit of five-time MLA and one of the veteran leaders of the Trinamool Congress, Tapas Roy, from the party on Monday (4 March) has dealt a body blow to the ruling party in Bengal. 

Roy was a contemporary of Mamata Banerjee in the Congress and debuted into the state assembly on a Congress ticket from Vidyasagar assembly constituency in Kolkata in 1996. 

Soon after Banerjee broke away from the Congress in 1997 and formed the Trinamool Congress on 1 January 1998, Roy also disassociated himself from his parent party and gravitated towards the breakaway party led by Banerjee. 

Roy won the Barabazar assembly seat in Kolkata on a Trinamool Congress ticket in 2001 and had, since then, remained very close to Banerjee. In fact, he has always been considered a staunch Banerjee loyalist. 

The 67-year-old MLA has held many important organisational positions and played a key role in building the party. He was seen very often with Banerjee during her countless demonstrations, sit-ins, rallies and strikes against the then Left Front government in Bengal. 

At Banerjee’s request, Roy took a break from electoral politics and concentrated on organisational matters. He played a vital role in the Singur and Nandigram movements that catapulted Banerjee to power in the state. 

Roy was fielded by his party from Baranagar assembly seat — Baranagar is in the north-western fringe of Kolkata — in 2011. The seat was a stronghold of the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), a constituent of the Left Front. 

Roy inflicted a humiliating defeat on the RSP candidate to wrest the seat from the communist party. He retained the seat in the 2016 and 2021 elections. 

Known for his superb organisational and crisis-management skills, Banerjee entrusted a lot of responsibilities on Roy and deployed him on many crucial fire-fighting missions. Roy has also been a very popular leader with a huge following among party cadres and lower-level functionaries in North 24 Parganas and Kolkata. 

Preferring to use him for party work, Banerjee did not induct him into the cabinet till 2018. “Tapasda was invaluable for the party and had shouldered many responsibilities, especially in North 24 Parganas and Kolkata. He had his hands full with party work and so could not be spared for government work as a minister,” a senior Trinamool leader who is also a Rajya Sabha MP told Swarajya. 

Banerjee made him a minister of state with independent charge of the lightweight planning and statistics department. Roy was in the cabinet for three years till 2021. 

Inducting Roy into the cabinet, said a Trinamool old-timer who had been a minister, was an experiment of sorts by Banerjee that did not work out. 

“Though Tapasda had a lightweight ministry, our party chairperson (Mamata Banerjee) realised that party work was suffering and so she asked him to devote himself full-time to party affairs after the 2021 elections,” said the party veteran who is a contemporary of Roy. 

Roy has been a silent worker and preferred to operate from behind the scenes. He never came into the limelight and was a low-key, non-controversial person. He reported directly to Banerjee. 

But his equation with Abhishek Banerjee was not very good. It is learnt that over the past couple of years, party leaders close to Abhishek Banerjee had been trying to sideline Roy and poison Mamata Banerjee’s ears against him. 

The turning point came on January 12 this year when the Enforcement Directorate raided Roy’s residence in central Kolkata in connection with the recruitment scam in Trinamool-run civic bodies in the state. 

The raid, believes Roy, was the result of inner-party rivalries and was part of a smear campaign against him. “Tapasda had nothing to do with the municipal recruitment process and believes he was falsely implicated by his rivals in the party who anonymously informed the ED that Roy was involved in the scam,” a close aide of the Baranagar MLA told Swarajya. 

That being the case, Roy was expecting some succour from Mamata Banerjee. But she never called him, nor did she send any senior party leader to meet him. Roy felt abandoned and insulted. 

Roy, it is learnt, concluded that his time in the Trinamool was over. With Abhishek Banerjee gaining importance by the day and Roy not finding a place in Abhishek Banerjee’s inner circle, coupled with some leaders close to Abhishek Banerjee conspiring against him, Roy has found himself out in the woods quite often of late. 

He also perceived that Mamata Banerjee had been distancing herself from him over the past few months. 

That is why Roy decided to quit the party he has been associated with for the past 24 years. 

His exit from the party will harm the party organisationally, especially in Kolkata and North 24 Parganas. 

Since a large number of cadres and lower-level functionaries of the party are personally loyal to him, they are also expected to dissociate themselves from the Trinamool or even join the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the coming days. 

Roy’s exit on the eve of the crucial Lok Sabha elections will also dampen the morale of Trinamool cadres and functionaries, and will provide the Opposition, especially the BJP, a stick to beat the Trinamool with. 

Roy has been privy and a keeper of many organisational secrets. Having been closely involved with party affairs, he possesses intimate knowledge of how the Trinamool functions as well as its strengths and weaknesses. 

All this information will be invaluable for the BJP if Roy joins the saffron party as is being speculated. 

Roy’s exit had caught the party, especially the top leadership, completely unawares. That is why frenetic attempts were made at the eleventh hour to dissuade him from leaving the party. 

A nervous Trinamool leadership has instructed party functionaries to desist from criticising Roy too harshly out of fear that it may upset and anger him. Because if that happens, there is no knowing what secrets (of the Trinamool) he will spill.