From CK Nayak
NEW DELHI: Former Meghalaya Governor Tathagata Roy is all set to make a come back to active politics in election-bound West Bengal, but there was no likelihood that BJP will be projecting him as the Chief Ministerial face.
Soon after his arrival from Shillong, Roy met BJP National spokesperson Kailash Vijaywargiya early this week to discuss his plans to foray into the BJP circuit in West Bengal ahead of the 2021 Assembly elections. He also held talks with the state party President Dilip Ghosh and others, but none seems to have committed about his role so far. Going by the emerging trends, the saffron party is not projecting anybody as Chief Ministerial face.
Roy himself is confident he can play a significant role in shaping the saffron party’s journey in Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo Mamata Banerjee’s turf.
Roy who was the state BJP President from 2002 to 2006 and a member of the party’s national executive from 2002 to 2015 is known to be an RSS loyalist.
The question of who would politically take on the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress in Bengal on behalf of the BJP has been doing the rounds for quite long now. A person with a similar political background and acceptance to lead the vicious electoral battle from the forefront is the need of the hour for the BJP and it has many contenders.
Meanwhile, West Bengal BJP Vice-president Ritiesh Tiwari said that the BJP is an organisation-based political party. Therefore, no individual leader gets any extra political mileage here.
There has been a fundamental change in the organisation in the last five years – the time when he had left the BJP and became Tripura Governor in 2015, Tewari said to a news agency. But currently, the political situation is completely different, he said.
Political analysts said that Roy was always accepted by the educated middle-class Bengalis for his erudite nature and intellectual refinement. But the new BJP leaders who are now in the forefront of mainstream politics in Bengal are fiercely outspoken on radical issues.
It is also now a question whether the newly retired governor will be able to get along with the new set of BJP leaders. A Facebook page, created on Monday night and called “Tathagata Roy for CM”, has already caused embarrassment for the party.
Quoting unnamed “BJP sources,” numerous news portals, social media pages and vernacular dailies have named a prominent sports personality, a BJP Rajya Sabha member, a Union minister, a member of a right-wing think tank and, last but not the least, a monk from the Ramakrishna Mission as the possible chief ministerial candidate against Mamata Banerjee. But the monk has dismissed the rumour, the others were evasive about engaging in any debate on this issue.