Even as the gap between Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her one time close aide and former Trinamool Congress all-India general secretary Mukul Roy continued to widen, the party started preparations for taking, what insiders said, "drastic actions" against him. According to sources with reports about Roy "inciting his followers to break away from the party and join the BJP", Banerjee, apparently in order to control further damage through the way of "sabotage from within", had directed senior leaders to prepare a show-cause notice for her once blue-eyed boy.
leader of Rajya Sabha Darek O'Brien had been asked to compile newspaper reports in which Roy had openly deviated from the declared party line after which he would be asked to show-cause for doing so. Sources added that it was a measure to segregate Roy mentally from the party and from the minds of the lower leadership, many of whom were still backing the former Railway Minister.
"There are some soldiers of the party who are conducting sabotage from within by indulging in anti-party activities. But such activities will hardly harm the party as big as the Trinamool Congress," State Minister and senior leader Partho Chatterjee said. The party had also written to push Roy further back to the seventh row from the current third row in Rajya Sabha, sources said.
When asked to comment, a seemingly indifferent Trinamool leader said, "let them push me as back as they can. The question is can anyone push me out of the Upper HouseIJ No. So is there a need to worryIJ" Trinamool sources said the former Railway Minister still had contacts with at least 38 MlAs and a few MPs who for the time being have been asked to lie low without opposing the party line. They would be asked to revolt only at an opportune moment.
"This policy has made the leadership anxious because it is becoming too difficult to understand as to who is with our leader Mamata Banerjee and who is with Mukul Roy. Once he is showcaused, those who will mingle openly with him will be pulled up," Chatterjee, who is also a State Minister, said. Meanwhile, sources said that Roy was planning to meet expelled CPI(M) leader and MlA Abdul Rezzak Mollah sometime next week. Mollah, a former State Minister, could even be urged to lead a political platform with breakaway Trinamool leaders in near future.
Roy's meeting with Mollah would come within days of his meeting Twaha Siddiqi, one of the most revered Muslim religious leaders in Bengal.