Tathagata Roy predicts exodus from Bengal BJP unit after election rout

Former Tripura and Meghalaya governor  and senior BJP leader Tathagata Roy on Thursday predicted an exodus of BJP leaders from its West Bengal unit following the party’s loss in the recently-concluded Assembly elections, and said it would “be the end of the party” in the state.

Roy, who served as president of the state BJP unit from 2002 to 2006, said the “garbage” who switched to the BJP from the Trinamool Congress ahead of the polls would return to the ruling party, along with old karyakartas (workers), who wouldn’t stay unless they saw signs of reforms within the state unit.

Taking to Twitter, Roy called the party’s top leaders in the state — Kailash Vijayvargiya, Dilip Ghosh, Shivprakash and Arvind Menon, whom he dubbed ‘KDSA’ — a “substandard, uninspired, mercenary bunch of people with no political insight, no analytical abilities, no sense of Bengali sensitivities”. He said they had “dragged the names of (our) respective 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 (West 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,” he said.

“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 added.

Roy said he didn’t blame the central leadership for the election loss as, in a country of 1.3 billion people, it was to be briefed by the state leadership.

Roy said he had been asked by the “topmost party leadership” to travel to Delhi as soon as possible.

The TMC returned to power with a landslide victory last week, winning 213 seats in the 294-member House. The BJP won 77 seats.

Roy, who was also a member of the BJP national executive, later served as Governor of three states — Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura and Meghalaya — between 2016 and 2020.