A section of state BJP leaders has demanded the removal of the party’s central minder for Bengal Kailash Vijayvargiya and his deputy Arvind Menon after Mukul Roy, who was perceived to be close to the duo, recently rejoined the Trinamul Congress ending his 44-month association with the saffron camp.

Vijayvargiya, one of the general secretaries of the BJP, was at the helm of affairs in the state unit and was seen as the primary architect of defections from Trinamul ahead of the Assembly polls.

Several senior BJP leaders, including some old-timers, had expressed reservations about the strategy of engineering defections from other parties, but Vijayvargiya, along with Menon, bulldozed their way through and got several Trinamul legislators to sign up for the party.

“We lost because of this trio, Kailash-Mukul-Menon. They are the ones responsible for the BJP’s such dismal performance in the election... Good riddance that Mukulda has quit. I wrote a letter to Amit Shah-ji (on Tuesday), requesting him to replace both Kailashji and Menonji,” Subrata Mishra, a vice-president of the BJP’s Asansol organisational district, told The Telegraph.

So far, former state BJP chief and former governor Tathagata Roy was the only person who had publicly criticised Vijayvargiya and his deputy. He had recently submitted a report to BJP national president J.P. Nadda on the probable reasons behind the party’s defeat and he had named the duo, too.

Sources said the demand for the removal of Vijayvargiya and Menon would grow further in coming days as leaders allegiant to Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh always had differences with the duo.

“Kailash-ji was under the influence of Mukul-da and that was why he had pushed Trinamul turncoats in several seats, which caused heart-burn among the party’s old-timers. Many of these dissidents had contested as Independents and we suffered,” said a state BJP leader.

After the rout the BJP faced in the election, most internal assessments have pointed to selection of wrong candidates as one of the major reasons for the poor show.

“Kailashji was the man behind these wrong decisions. Even if someone would try to speak sense to him, he would discard their opinion. The only person he listened to was Mukulda. The question is why he did have so much trust in Mukulda?” a state BJP office bearer said before demanding an inquiry into the minder’s dealings with Roy.

A BJP source in West Midnapore’s Garhbeta Assembly segment alleged that Roy and Vijayvargiya had planned to field candidates with negligible public acceptance in the seats which fall under the Midnapore Lok Sabha constituency represented by Ghosh.

“The choice of candidates thinned our chances to win the seats in Midnapore. This way, they wanted to show that Dilipda was not capable of ensuring victory in his own constituency. It was a ploy to embarrass him,” this person said.

MLA letter to Speaker

Trinamul turncoat and BJP’s Cooch Behar South MLA Mihir Goswami has written to Assembly Speaker Biman Banerjee, requesting him to give a copy of his order in which he had barred the entry of central security personnel on the premises of the House.

Banerjee had earlier barred the entry of central forces into the Assembly.