BJP leader and former Tripura and Meghalaya governor Tathagata Roy on Thursday renewed his attack on the BJP’s Bengal leadership and its minders at the centre, claiming the ship to rescue the party in the state had already sailed.

“Well-wishers of the BJP say I shouldn’t have gone public on my allegations against women and money ruining the party but raised it in the internal forums. Very humbly state, that time is long gone past. BJP (leaders) can take whatever action they want to take against me. But, if the party does not mend its way, then its days are numbered in the state,” the former governor wrote in a tweet on Thursday morning.

The comment comes a month before the party fights for the Calcutta and Howrah municipal corporations elections, which are likely to be announced any day now.

The tweet comes exactly 10 days after he had raised the flag alleging that the Bengal unit was muddled in sleaze and cash.

The “lately whistleblower” as Roy prefers to introduce himself on his Twitter bio has done little apart from slinging mud at party leaders. His main targets have been Bengal minders Kailash Vijaywargiya, Shiv Prakash, Arvind Menon and former Bengal unit president and MP Dilip Ghosh.

Vijaywargiya, who had successfully managed the BJP’s campaign in Haryana in 2014 when the BJP formed the government in the state for the first time, was soon made Bengal minder with an eye on the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. The BJP did well in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls winning 18 seats (which translates into 126 Assembly seats) but has since then been on a downward spiral.

Roy had earlier urged newly-appointed state president Sukanto Mazumdar and leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikary to hold the reins of the party tightly to come out of the earlier mould.

Mazumdar, a Sangh acolyte, has so far inspired little confidence among the BJP cadre, as seen by the drubbing that that party suffered in the by-polls, adding salt to the wounds of this summer’s Assembly polls. On the other hand, Adhikary is yet to complete a year in the BJP but has managed the key position of leader of the Opposition riding high on his defeating Mamata Banerjee in Nandigram.

Despite all his bravado Adhikary has not been able to check the reverse trickle of legislators elected on a BJP ticket to the Trinamul, many of whom had followed him to the saffron party.

Roy’s relationship with BJP leaders in Delhi and Calcutta have been testy for a long time. In the past he had led the party when it was struggling to keep its presence felt in the early 20s and held hands with Mamata Banerjee to tiptoe into the corridors of power starting with the Calcutta Municipal Corporation. A Sanghi at heart, Roy even while discharging gubernatorial responsibilities got involved in sledging with commoners on Twitters over his communally-charged tweets.

In April 2020, Roy was removed as governor. The few years spent in the Raj Bhawan had already made him distant from the power centre in the Bengal BJP then resting with Dilip Ghosh.

In the run-up to the 2021 Assembly polls, if Roy had thought the party would give him a position of pre-eminence, he was disappointed as BJP chose to open its doors to anyone and everyone from the Trinamul and, also, the tinsel world.

While some of the points that Roy has raised, especially about granting a free hand to Trinamul turncoats which did not go down well with Bengal voters, were valid, his repeated attacks have turned him more of a stranger in his own party that he has served for four-decades.

“What has he done for the party? The party fielded him from the Calcutta South Lok Sabha seat when Mamata Banerjee was no longer contesting (in 2014). He did not even campaign properly,” said a BJP leader.

Despite Roy’s misgivings about the Delhi trio, they still remain in charge of Bengal.

“Those who are trying to muddy the water using social media from their air-conditioned room, should ponder who they are actually helping,” said former BJP Bengal president Dilip Ghosh.