Former all-India general secretary of the Trinamul Congress Mukul Roy and his son Subhranshu returned to the party after more than three-and-a-half years of joining the BJP on Friday, ending weeks of speculation on the “return of the Prodigal”.

“I can say that I am very happy to be back here in this room and seeing the old faces,” said Roy before addressing Mamata Banerjee as “our leader, India’s leader” at the Trinamul Bhawan, where he had held fort before many election campaigns.

“I couldn’t continue in BJP. I don’t want to continue in BJP. That is why I have returned to my old home,” he said. “I will issue a detailed statement on why I had to leave the BJP.”

Roy, who was the second-in-command till his fall from grace at TMC, was given a seat between Mamata and her heir-apparent Abhishek Banerjee. Roy and Abhishek shared a hug before Mamata handed over the microphone to him.

“I have quit BJP. Nobody will remain in that party… We will see how many will come (to the Trinamul),” said Roy, who had been appointed as a national vice-president in the BJP but had little role to play in the Bengal unit in the last two years.

While welcoming her old lieutenant, Mamata made it clear that the bonhomie that existed between the two was now a thing of the past, as she reminded one and all that the party had just won a landslide victory. What was left unsaid was that the Trinamul victory came while Roy was still in the BJP.

“Our party is already strong,” she said when asked how Roy’s return would strengthen the Trinamul. “We have just won a landslide victory… Nobody can stay in BJP. Mukul was also pressured (to join BJP), threatened with agencies,” Mamata said.

“Mukul did not say a word against us. There are moderates and extremists. Those traitors who quit the party before elections for money and other gains and abused us, we will never accept them back,” Mamata said, making it clear the Trinamul door was shut for the Adhikari family.

She added that with Roy’s exit the BJP would fall like a house of cards.

Architect of victory

Two summers ago, Roy was being hailed as the “architect” by none other than the number two in the BJP, Amit Shah, after the party’s spectacular performance in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, when it bagged 18 seats. But

seeds of his decision to return to the Trinamul were possibly planted in the months between the Lok Sabha and the Assembly elections.

“I couldn’t continue in BJP. I don’t want to continue in BJP. That is why I have returned to my old home,” said Roy, while his son sat behind him.

In November 2017, Roy was then the prized catch of the BJP and was made the head of the party’s election committee. While BJP had its own brand of home-tutored RSS-backed leaders, none of them could hope to capture the attention of the masses. Not that Roy himself was a mass leader. Only once in his life had he contested an election in 2001 but lost from the Jagaddal Assembly seat. Yet, from his days in the Trinamul, Roy was hailed as an organisational man, a strategist who knew the ins and outs of each and every polling booth of Bengal.

Vice-president without a role

Long before BJP turned poaching Opposition lawmakers into a national strategy, Roy had mastered it. “Though Mukul da was made a national vice-president, he did not have a specific role in the BJP. He was always a back-office man and that is what he did without being told to,” said an aide.

Roy kept one eye on the organisation and another on leaders in the Trinamul who had joined politics either by clutching his hands or owed their rise to him.

Barrackpore MLA Arjun Singh, Cooch Behar Trinamul leader Nisith Pramanik went on to become MPs in the BJP.

Roy had entered the saffron fold holding the hands of the late Arun Jaitley and Kailash Vijaywargiya, but he never did enjoy a good rapport with the old guard, especially the Bengal unit chief, Dilip Ghosh. For the most part of his stay in the BJP, he remained inactive, while Ghosh and his men called the shots in the party.

‘Wrong tactics’

Things took a turn for the worse after the Lok Sabha results. “Though he never said it explicitly, he was not happy with the way the party was being run. He would say BJP is using the wrong tactics,” said another Roy aide.

After the Lok Sabha election, the BJP opened an office at Hastings where Roy met supporters and journalists over a cup of tea in the afternoon.

“There were hardly any BJP leaders who joined him there. Dada would have preferred to be in the back-office deciding on strategy, but no one was asking for his opinion,” the aide said.

If that wasn’t enough, Roy found himself restricted to the Krishnagar North Assembly seat from where the BJP gave him a ticket, facilitating his maiden victory in electoral politics.

His son Subhranshu lost from the Bijpur Assembly seat contesting on a BJP ticket.

Saradha scam

Long regarded as the Number Two in Trinamul scheme of things, Roy’s fallout with Mamata started around September 2014, when the heat of the Saradha scam was scorching the Trinamul leadership.

Roy’s attempt to distance himself from a deal signed between the railway subsidiary IRCTC and Saradha during Mamata’s tenure as railway minister had irked the chief minister.

One after the other, Roy’s key men were removed from their positions, and he himself was sidelined.

Till December 29, 2014, Roy was the sole in-charge of handling membership and renewals, after which a six-member scrutiny committee was announced. Roy had stayed away from the first meeting of the committee held on January 1, 2015.

After much speculation in November 2017, Roy formally joined the BJP, the same party, one of whose leaders had coined the slogan: “Bhag Mukul Bhag”. On Friday, Mukul ran away from the BJP to return to the Trinamul.

“As long as he was in the party, he focussed himself on the organisational role. He was not hankering after personal glory. He did whatever he was told. Though differences had cropped up, he never worked against the interest of the party,” said a Trinamul source.

In better light

This gesture of Roy showed him in a better light against the likes of the Adhikari family. Sisir Adhikari continues to be a Trinamul MP, while campaigning for the BJP in the Assembly polls.

It is expected Roy will formally quit his maiden Assembly seat Krishnagar North, like he did with the Rajya Sabha seat which he resigned from after quitting Trinamul. The buzz in Trinamul is that Roy could be offered either of the two Rajya Sabha seats vacated by Dinesh Trivedi and Manas Bhunia.

While Trivedi has joined the BJP, Bhunia is a minister in the Mamata cabinet.

Mukul Roy's " homecoming" has dominated speculation in Bengal for weeks, ever since the state election results that returned Mamata Banerjee to power with a landslide against the BJP's challenge.

The buzz intensified last week when Abhishek Banerjee, the nephew of Mamata Banerjee and a key leader of her party, visited Roy at the hospital where his wife is admitted. The very next day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi reportedly spoke to Roy on the phone to ask about his wife's health.

Roy's silence and his absence from a key BJP meet in Calcutta were seen to be big hints that the reports were true.