Ex-governor Tathagata Roy slams top BJP leaders for Bengal poll debacle - Hindustan Times
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Ex-governor Tathagata Roy slams top BJP leaders for Bengal poll debacle

ByHT Correspondent | Edited by Smriti Sinha
May 06, 2021 04:29 PM IST

Roy headed the Bengal unit of the BJP between 2002 and 2006. In back-to-back tweets on Thursday, he levelled allegations of incompetence against Dilip Ghosh, Kailash Vijayvargiya, national secretary Arvind Menon, and national joint general secretary (organisation) Shivprakash

Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader from Bengal and former governor of Meghalaya and Tripura, Tathagata Roy on Thursday virtually lambasted the party’s Bengal unit president Dilip Ghosh and three Central leaders for the debacle in the recently concluded assembly polls. The party, which was aiming for 200+ seats, managed to bag only 77 of the 292 seats, while the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) secured 213.

Tathagata Roy. (HT archive)
Tathagata Roy. (HT archive)

Election in two assembly seats will be held later as two candidates died of Covid-19 in mid-April.

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Roy headed the Bengal unit of the BJP between 2002 and 2006. In back-to-back tweets on Thursday, he levelled allegations of incompetence against Ghosh, national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya, national secretary Arvind Menon, and national joint general secretary (organisation) Shivprakash. The three Central leaders supervised the poll preparations.

“Kailash-Dilip-Shiv-Arvind (KDSA) foursome have dragged the names of our respected Prime Minister and Home Minister through mud and have sullied the name of the biggest political party in the world. Sitting atop Agarwal Bhavan of Hastings (W Bengal BJP’s election headquarters) and 7-star hotels they have distributed tickets to incoming garbage from Trinamool. Now faced with abuse from party workers they’re staying put there, hoping the storm will blow over,” tweeted Roy who has a long association with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), BJP’s ideological parent organisation.

Also Read | MHA sends 4-member team to West Bengal to look into post-poll violence

“These people have heaped the worst possible insults on ideologically driven BJP workers and devout Swayamsevaks who had been relentlessly working for the party since 1980s. Now those very people are suffering the worst persecution from Trinamoolis. But KDSA won’t go to their rescue, won’t even exhort them to fight back. Instead they are trying to draw comfort from having raised BJP’s tally from 3 to 77,” Roy wrote, referring to RSS workers.

“A substandard, uninspired, mercenary bunch of people with no political insight, no analytical abilities, no sense of Bengali sensitivities. Education up to Class VIII and a fitter mistri’s certificate. What do you expect?” wrote Roy, who himself is a civil engineer from IIT and also holds a law degree. He founded the construction engineering department at Kolkata’s Jadavpur University where he taught for many years.

“Some ask why don’t I blame the central leadership? A central leadership in a country of 1.3 billion has to be briefed by the state leadership who are just clueless. Now I apprehend two exoduses from the state BJP. First of course is of the garbage who came from Trinamool and will now go back. The second may be the old Karyakartas of BJP. Unless they see signs of reform within the party they will also leave. And that will be the end of the party in West Bengal,” tweeted Roy.

“In the depths of my frustration, I think of my icons Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee and Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyay. How they had suffered, and compared to that what is my suffering! And the thoughts of PP Doctorji and Guruji. Such thoughts, such suffering will not go in vain. Never!” he added, referring to RSS icons.

Neither Ghosh nor the three leaders Roy targeted were available for comment.

But BJP state vice-president Jay Prakash Majumdar said, “Roy expressed his personal views on which we cannot comment. However, I can say that in a disciplined national party like ours, such comments are not made in public.”

TMC Rajya Sabha member Sukhendu Sekhar Roy said, “If a BJP leader as senior as Tathagata Roy is making such statements against his own party leaders, there has to be some substance in it.”

Meanwhile, Roy has been summoned to Delhi by BJP’s national leadership. “I have been asked by the topmost party leadership to come to Delhi ASAP,” he wrote in his last tweet.

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