BJP leader Mukul Roy and West Bengal party chief Dilip Ghosh celebrate BJP’s win in Tripura in Kolkata. (Express Photo: Subham Dutta)
The Trinamool Congress, which had emerged as a force to reckon with in Tripura in the 2014 Lok Sabha election and had given the call to oust the Left, all but fizzled out in the Assembly polls, results of which were declared Saturday. The party, which was looking at consolidating its national party status by putting up a credible fight in the state election, managed just 0.3 per cent of the vote share.
The man who would be having the last laugh after the Trinamool’s dismal show is the party’s one-time number 2 Mukul Roy, now with BJP. His is not the crown for the BJP win, but for him, the acknowledgement came several months ago when Trinamool chief and West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee said the party’s campaign in Tripura was suffering because of a “traitor who joined the BJP” — a clear reference to Roy, once her most trusted lieutenant.
Following Roy’s exit, the party briefly tried to stitch together an alliance with Congress, but the efforts fell through over seat-sharing arrangement.
West Bengal MLA Sabyasachi Datta, who oversaw the Trinamool campaign in Tripura, said, “We got just one month to fight the election; we tried for the alliance for about seven days. It is true that after our performance in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, a section of Tripura had been hoping that Trinamool would uproot Left, but then the in-charge was Mukul Roy. I cannot say why that changed. I know I was given responsibility one month before the election.”
In 2014, the party had notched up a voteshare of around 9 per cent in the two Lok Sabha constituencies in the state.
Asked if the crossing over of six MLAs to BJP hurt the party’s prospects, Datta said, “In 2014, we did not have those MLAs. They were with Congress. Yet, we performed the way we did. You have to ask Roy what went wrong. I was in charge only for a month.”
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