Kolkata: The Calcutta High Court ordered the Bengal Speaker on Tuesday to decide on the disqualification of Mukul Roy by October 7. This development came up BJP’s Nandigram MLA Suvendu Adhikari approached the Calcutta High Court seeking Roy’s disqualification inspite of his request to the Speaker. Highlighting that Speaker Biman Banerjee had not disqualified Roy despite his defection to TMC three months ago, Adhikari also said that multiple legislators have switched sides owing to the non-implementation of the anti-defection law.
Adhikari has also written to the Speaker seeking the disqualification of BJP MLAs Biswajit Das, Soumen Roy and Tanmoy Ghosh. Recently, TMC named Roy as the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) chairperson for the year 2021-22, inspite of BJP’s opposition. The saffron party has opposed Mukul Roy’s election to PAC as he had contested on a BJP ticket and later switched to TMC. They have also moved the High Court seeking the removal of Mukul Roy as the PAC chairman.
On June 11, Mukul and Subhranshu Roy rejoined the Trinamool Congress in the presence of CM Mamata Banerjee and TMC General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee at the party’s Kolkata headquarters, after a 4-year BJP term. Roy and his son had hinted at their exit when Roy skipped an important organizational meeting of the saffron party and his silence on the post-poll violence. Miffed at being sidelined for Suvendu Adhikari, who was elected as Leader of Opposition, Roy stated that “No one will remain in BJP in the current scenario”, while rejoining TMC. Later, Roy was made Trinamool Congress’s national Vice-president and has begun the groundwork for the party’s expansion into Tripura.
Roy had resigned from TMC in September 2017 and joined BJP two months later. Subsequently, he was made the national vice-president of the BJP in September 2020. While he won the Krishnanagar North seat in Nadia district, his son Subhrangshu who joined the party in May 2019 was defeated from the Bijpur seat from where he was the incumbent MLA. Mamata Banerjee managed to halt the BJP juggernaut, retaining Bengal with TMC winning 213 seats whereas BJP could win in only 77 constituencies.
