In a significant statement that could go a distance in determining future chemistry between rebel Trinamool Congress leader Mukul Roy and BJP, the former Railway Minister on Wednesday said the saffron outfit was not communal which was why the Trinamool had held BJP’s hands right from its inception in 1998-99.
Meanwhile, in an unrelated development, Ratna Chatterjee, the wife of Kolkata Mayor and Minister Sovan Chatterjee, once again failed to appear for interrogation at the Enforcement Directorate in Kolkata.
“BJP is never a communal party which is why the Election Commission has given recognition to it. The BJP has been fighting elections for so many years because it is not a communal party,” Roy who had been suspended from the Trinamool Congress a few days ago for anti-party activities said reminding the Trinamool Congress had walked hand-in-hand with the BJP since the time of its birth in 1998-99.
“The Trinamool fought elections in alliance with the BJP from its birth to 2006,” he said adding the Bengal ruling outfit would not have been in a position that it was now without the BJP’s help. “How can one forget that the Trinamool was an NDA constituent and was in the Union Cabinet during this timeIJ”
When asked about his future plans vis-a-vis, the saffron outfit sources close to Roy said he would leave for Delhi on Friday and would take a call only after returning to Kolkata.
Roy had currently been visiting the office of a new breakaway party created called Nationalist Trinamool Congress which was formed in 2015 allegedly at the behest of the Trinamool leader when relationship between him and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee started worsening in the wake of divulging the truth to the Central Bureau of Investigation which quizzed him in the multi-crore Sharada chit fund case.
Roy, once called “Chanakya” of the Trinamool Congress for his “blood and iron policy that made Trinamool Congress what it is today while Mamata Banerjee concentrated on huge rallies and her Railway Ministry,” has “wide and vertical” contacts inside the party and is capable of doing much harm to it organisationally if the rank and file can be “assured of a definite result,” an MlA who sympathises with the suspended leader said.
Meanwhile, in a scathing attack on Roy, senior Trinamool leader and Bengal Minister Partho Chatterjee said “What he is doing is a blunder because in Trinamool Congress there is no leader sans Mamata Banerjee.
If you are not with her you are nowhere. If my good friend (Roy) is bent upon committing this blunder then let him do it. But he seems to have forgotten the first lesson of politics that is loyalty.”
Meanwhile, Ratna Chatterjee the wife of Kolkata Mayor and Minister Sovan Chatterjee once again failed to appear for interrogation at the Enforcement Directorate in Kolkata.
She was issued summons for the second time but failed to turn up as she was currently being treated in England for reported ailments.
Ratna Chatterjee was summoned in the Narada case after her husband during interrogation told both ED and CBI that he had no information about his properties and business as all were looked after by his wife. The Mayor was seen in the Narada sting video footage accepting wads of currency notes from a journalist who had faked as a prospective investor in the State.
Subsequently, Chatterjee was summoned along with 12 other Ministers, MPs and senior TMC leaders who were also purportedly seen in a similar act of taking money from the journalist.