Mamata would have been CM in 2001 had she continued with BJP: Tathagata Roy

In his book Desires, Dreams and Powers, Roy offers a view of how the equation between Banerjee and the BJP changed from one-time allies to political opponents

Had Mamata Banerjee not broken ties with the Bharatiya Janata Party led National Democratic Alliance in 2001, she might have become the chief minister of West Bengal the same year, former Governor of Tripura and former state unit president of the BJP, Tathagatha Roy has claimed in his book Desires, Dreams and Powers.

Tathagatha Roy has traced the events that led to Mamata snapping ties with the NDA in his book. (Amazon.in)

The book which details Roy’s journey in politics, offers a view of how the equation between Banerjee and the BJP changed from one-time allies to political opponents.

“...She broke away from the Congress to establish her own party, the Trinamool Congress, successfully taking the bulk of the Congress’s support base [n West Bengal] with her. She was essentially a fiery street fighter, unmatched in this role. Additionally, she made a point of showcasing her simple lifestyle, often seen wearing blue-and-white cotton sarees and inexpensive Hawaii chappals. With all these attributes, she emerged as the undisputed leader of the Opposition in West Bengal,” Roy says in the book.

Referring to her decision to split from NDA as a “significant mistake”, he says, had she not quit the NDA following a sting operation on the then BJP’s all-India president Bangaru Laxman, she might have become the chief minister of the state in 2001! Banerjee was sworn in as first woman chief minister of West Bengal in May 2011.

Tracing the events that led to her snapping ties with the NDA, Roy writes, “It all started with a sting operation in 2001 by the magazine Tehelka, with Tarun Tejpal as its editor. An undercover agent, posing as the representative of a fictitious UK-based arms dealer, approached the BJP president, Bangaru Laxman, offered him some money for an order for infra-red binoculars and secretly videographed it. Bangaru was seen taking the money and putting it in a drawer. The video was then telecast over the portal tehelka.com. Bangaru had to resign his post as the party president and was later convicted by a special CBI court to rigorous imprisonment.”

Banerjee, who was the union minister for Railway in the Atal Bihari Bihar Vajpayee cabinet resigned following the scandal.

“This was a chance to prove her unimpeachable integrity and her disdain for her ministerial berth, and she used her rubber ‘Hawaii’ slippers as a prop. In front of the media, she flapped her slippers and said she regarded her minister’s post as no more valuable than her Hawaii slippers, which cost ₹45. Then she formally resigned, severed connections with the ruling coalition called the NDA, forged ties with the Congress, which she had left just four years back, and returned to Kolkata,” he writes.

Pointing out that the decision to resign was grandstanding and for optics, Roy writes that she later realised her mistake and was back in the NDA fold, “ In terms of practical politics, she had no earthly reason to resign. Bangaru Laxman’s malfeasance concerned neither her party nor her department. No other coalition partner of NDA resigned, except her. She chose to do it solely to emphasize her commitment to honesty in public life, inadvertently overplaying her hand in the process. Little did her state know the kind of corruption that awaited it after she ascended the throne.”

Roy claims, “desiring a ministerial berth to wield some influence in the state”, she approached the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to rejoin the cabinet she had left abruptly. “However, Atalji, this time, was not so pliable and initially kept her as a minister without a portfolio for quite some time. After she had cooled her heels, Atalji appointed her as the minister for coal.”

Banerjee subsequently tied up with the BJP for the Panchayat election of 2003.

Referring to the 2001 state elections that Banerjee was confident of winning, Roy says her calculation of storming to power in the state by taking on the CPI (M)-led Left Front proved wrong.

“The CPI (M) was not confident of victory in the 2001 elections, given the baggage of anti-incumbency and the unpopularity of Jyoti Basu, who had just been replaced by Buddhadeb Bhattacharya. Mamata’s resignation from the ministry and the NDA was like a boost for them. I have it on good authority that many branch and local committees celebrated the occasion and honoured their members with a sumptuous feast of mutton curry and rice. The CPI (M)’s calculations were proven to be correct, and they emerged victorious. Mamata Banerjee’s party secured just sixty seats, while the Congress obtained twenty-six,” he writes about the 2001 poll.

The author also claims he first mooted the idea of partnering with the TMC leader.

“From the very beginning, even before I became the president, I was in favour of forging an alliance with Mamata Banerjee, who had by then emerged as the main force in anti-Left politics in the state. I reasoned that we must join forces with Mamata so that we could fight the CPI (M) together and not split the anti-Left votes,” he says.

He claims he saw an alliance with her as a means of breaking into the state which had become “entirely binary over the years, and any third party stood no chance.”

Recalling the strain in ties between the BJP and the TMC post the 2004 Lok Sabha polls, Roy says after the defeat of the NDA, Banerjee “insidiously began” to widen the gap between her party and the BJP and even snubbed the then party chief Rajnath Singh’s request for allocating winnable seats in the 2006 state polls.

“In the 2006 elections to the West Bengal assembly, it became quite apparent that she was on her way to severing connections with the BJP. I was still the state president of the party then and haggled with her for a few winnable seats for the BJP...She was unyielding. At one stage, the all-India president Rajnath Singh came to Kolkata and pleaded with her to give the Krishnanagar assembly seat to Jolu (Satyabrata) Mukherjee. I overheard the conversation and was filled with anguish at the cavalier, even rude, manner in which she treated our all-India president.”

The Left Front won, with CPI (M) alone getting 176 seats while the TMC secured just 30, the Congress won 21 seats and the BJP drew a blank.

The author claims although Banerjee distanced herself from the BJP, she maintained ties with LK Advani and Sushma Swaraj.

“Thereafter, she increased the distance with the BJP but took full advantage of Advaniji and Sushmaji’s trip to Nandigram. Her supposed hunger strike in protest against the forcible acquisition of land in Singur for the Tata Motors factory saw Rajnath Singh visiting her, but it made little difference. By 2008 or 2009, she was completely away from the BJP, preparing for the 2011 polls on her own, taking advantage of Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s arrogance,” he says.

The author is also unsparing of his party colleagues for handling the electoral issues in the state in 2021 for the assembly polls and sidelining many old party workers. “The BJP’s campaign in the 2021 West Bengal assembly elections can serve as an instruction manual on how not to contest an election,” he writes.

Taking swipes at the team led by the then national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya, Roy writes the election machinery was firmly controlled by the “Kailash-led quartet” that was “determined to run it with complete newcomers, a few ‘paratroopers’ and a Hindi-speaking crowd. They even organized a ‘Yogdaan Mela’ ( Joining Fair), a celebration where turncoats from other parties joined the BJP en masse, disregarding their basic political beliefs, if any”.

The other members of the team were national joint general secretary (organisation) Shiv Prakash and Arvind Menon who was co-in-charge of the state.