Kolkata: The BJP’s West Bengal unit and its electoral prospects in this year’s assembly elections were “brutally damaged” by party leader Kailash Vijayvargiya and his “failed” strategies, former Tripura and Meghalaya governor Tathagata Roy has said.
Vijayvargiya is the BJP’s Bengal in charge.
A group of leaders not only damaged Bengal BJP but hurt the state’s interests, Roy told ThePrint. Roy said he had submitted a 10-page report to party president J.P. Nadda in June which he now intends to release to “show how some leaders worked completely against the party”.
“The report I submitted to our national president four months back is explosive in nature. It has accounts of our party workers and local leaders, some documents and evidence to prove how this pack of leaders has not only damaged Bengal BJP but brought some irrevocable loss to the state. I will make certain documents public when the right time comes,” Roy said.
Claiming that he, as an “ordinary Hindu Bengali and a proud BJP member”, has nothing to lose politically and otherwise, Roy said, “I shall speak the truth. No one can stop me from doing that. I never got a stricture from my top leadership. It is my duty to inform them and that I have done. I am with the grassroots workers of BJP. They are in touch with me. They are helpless. I will stand with them, but not with the ones who destroyed BJP’s bright chances here this election.”
In a series of tweets Monday, Roy also tweeted a picture of Vijayvargiya alongside a pug with a line in Bengali which read: “Vodafone is in Bengal again.”
https://t.co/dzfBnLVJVu pic.twitter.com/cyrJobXBAv
— Tathagata Roy (@tathagata2) October 25, 2021
Roy said he posted these images as an “Indian, Hindu and Bengali” man who is a “proud and ordinary member of BJP”.
Amit Malviya, senior BJP leader and co-in charge of Bengal, called such tweets by a senior functionary “disappointing”.
BJP leaders sought to dismiss Roy’s allegations, claiming to ThePrint off the record that he was upset with the party leadership as they didn’t field him in the assembly election and didn’t even offer him any post in the organisation.
ThePrint reached Vjayavargiya through text messages and calls on his mobile but was yet to receive any response till the time of publishing this report.
Not the first time
Vijayvargiya, who is still in charge of West Bengal, was entrusted with the responsibility of managing and supervising Bengal elections. But he has not returned to the state since the elections ended.
The tiff between Vijayvargiya and Roy is not new. Roy criticised Vijayvargiya earlier too stating that the latter, along with other senior leaders, has “sullied the name of the biggest political party in the world”.
Kailash-Dilip-Shiv-Arvind (KDSA) foursome have dragged the names of our respected 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 (W Bengal BJP’s election headquarters)
— Tathagata Roy (@tathagata2) May 6, 2021
He had also slammed Vijayvargiya and former state BJP chief Dilip Ghosh for giving tickets to film and TV actors who eventually failed to win votes.
The ongoing row is just the latest in a series of controversies associated with the former governor, who is known to make provocative statements.
In 2019, after the Pulwama attack, Roy supported a call to “boycott everything Kashmiri”. He was the governor of Meghalaya at the time. He also courted a controversy for tweets denigrating Bengalis, where he said their greatness was long gone and they were either “sweeping floors” or working as “bar dancers” in Mumbai.
(Edited by Neha Mahajan)
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