News Analysis India

Tag: Mukul Roy

  • BJP leaders assure Matuas of Shah’s meeting soon, Trinamool blames it of resorting to falsehood

    By PTI
    KOLKATA: With Union Home Minister Amit Shah cancelling his visit to Matua stronghold Thakurnagar in North 24 Paragans district on Saturday, senior BJP leaders Kailash Viayvargiya and Mukul Roy met prominent members of the commuity and assured them that the central minister will hold a meeting for them “very soon”.

    Vijayvargiya, BJP national general secretary and Roy, the party’s national vice-president, were closeted in an over an hour long meeting with party MP Santanu Thakur.

    They told the members of the community that Shah’s visit to Thakurnagar was cancelled due to sudden developments in Delhi and that he will visit the place “very soon” and address the Matuas during his next visit to the state.

    Shah’s two-day visit to West Bengal from Saturday was cancelled at the last minute following a blast outside the Israeli embassy in the national capital.

    His proposed meeting at Thakurnagar assumes importance as the Matuas with an estimated population of 30 lakh in the state can influence the poll outcome in at least 60 assembly seats in Nadia, North and South 24 Parganas districts of poll-bound West Bengal.

    Polls are likely to be held in April- May this year.

    Later, Roy told reporters “Amit Shah spoke to Santanu Thakur about holding the proposed meeting on any coming day and asked the organizers not to dismantle the stage originally erected for the meeting”.

    “Please don’t dismantle the stage and keep yourself ready for all last minute arrangements in 24-48 hour notice. My office will keep you posted,” Roy quoted Shah as having told Santanu Thakur.

    Meanwhile, Matuas living in pockets near the Bangladesh border who had come to the headquarters of the sect looked distraught at the sudden change of plan and left the venue.

    “Shah could not come due to developments in Delh. He is a busy person. We are ready to wait for him,” a member of the community said.

    Mamatabala Thakur, Trinamool Congress leader from the community on the other hand said the cancellation of the scheduled meeting showed that Shah had nothing concrete to offer to the Matuas regarding the citizenship issue.

    Matuas originally hail from erstwhile East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, and began migrating to West Bengal in the beginning of the 1950s, mostly due to religious persecution.

    Senior TMC leader Subrata Mukherjee claimed that BJP was giving “false promises” to the community.

    Referring to the assurances by BJP in the past about Citizenship Amendment Act among the Matuas, Mukherjee, who is also a senior state minister, said “Matuas have always had citizenship in Bengal. They have voted.”

    “How can you give citizenship to those who are already citizens? Those who have ration cards are citizens,” he said.

    In November 2020 Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had distributed 25,000 land pattas to refugees from the Matua community.

    “This land right document will ensure that they are citizens,” Mukherjee pointed out.

    “Parliament rules were supposed to be framed within six months for Citizenship Amendment Act after the Lok Sabha polls. They (BJP) asked for more time to make rules, leaving thousands of people in uncertainty. Now they are using COVID- 19 as an excuse. All of this is jumla (false promise),” he addedd.

  • Bengal polls: BJP leaders visit Matua belt to ease discontent after Shah cancels visit

    Express News Service
    KOLKATA: In a bid to ease the discontent of Matuas triggered by the cancellation of Amit Shah’s West Bengal visit on Saturday, BJP’s top-level functionaries visited the religious sect’s headquarters at Thakurnagar in Bongaon, North 24 Parganas, on Saturday and assured that the Union Home Minister would come to the area shortly.

    The national vice president of BJP Mukul Roy and national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya went to Bongaon and met local BJP MP Shantanu Thakur, a representative of Matuas.

    “Amitji’s event had to be cancelled because of the unavoidable situation in Delhi. He called Vijayvargiyaji and talked to Shantanu Thakur over the phone. There is no reason to get disappointed. He (Shah) assured that he would visit the area any day in the near future,” said Roy.

    Roy also said the stage which was set up for Shah’s visit would not be dismantled. “It will be kept ready. Matuas will be informed shortly when Amitji is coming here and thousands of people will spill over the ground where the Union Home Minister will address a rally,” he added.

    Shah’s Bongaon visit was a much-awaited event as the followers of the religious sect wanted him to announce a deadline for giving them citizenship by implementing CAA. Matuas belonging to the scheduled caste community, who had migrated from Bangladesh after the 1947 Partition and 1971 war, voted for the BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections en bloc after the saffron camp had promised them citizenship.

    ALSO READ | Rajib Banerjee quits as MLA, thanks CM Mamata for ‘opportunity to serve masses’

    Banking on Matuas’ support, BJP’s deep inroads resulted in a massive jolt to the ruling Trinamool Congress, which failed to retain two Lok Sabha seats in south Bengal—Bongaon, and Ranaghat.

    Bengal BJP functionaries planned to bring Shah to Matua stronghold after the local MP, on several occasions, expressed his discontent for not implementing the contentious CAA and saying, “I don’t know what will be Matuas’ political alignment in the upcoming Assembly elections if the citizenship promise is not kept.”

    Using the cancellation of Shah’s visit as a political tool to regain the support-base, former TMC MP of the area Mamatabala Thakur alleged the BJP insulted Matuas by giving them a false promise of citizenship before last year’s general elections. “He (Shah) could have come here today for a few hours as the incident (the blast in Delhi) took place. It is a fact that the BJP has nothing to say before Matuas,” she said.

  • Joining Mamata’s Singur movement was wrong: Mukul Roy

    By Express News Service
    KOLKATA: BJP’s national vice-president Mukul Roy on Friday said if his party comes to power in West Bengal, it will make efforts to bring the Tata Motors back to the state. Roy, who was the second-in-command in the TMC before joining the saffron camp, admitted that his participation in the agitation against the company setting up a plant in Singur was a “wrong decision”.

    “Participating in Mamata Banerjee’s Singur movement to drive out Tata Motors was a wrong decision and if our party comes to power in the state, we will meet PM Narendra Modi and request him to take steps to bring the Tatas back to Bengal. No industrialist is keen to come to Bengal after the Tatas left,” said Roy while addressing a rally in East Midnapore’s Nandigram, the epicentre of the movement against the then Left Front government’s land acquisition.

    Friday’s rally was organised under the leadership of former TMC strongman Suvendu Adhikari, who was elected from Nandigram as an MLA. Mamata was scheduled to address a rally at the same place on January 7 but the party postponed the event. Adhikari, who joined the BJP recently, had announced the rally to challenge his former “boss”.

    Referring to Mamata’s statements labelling Adhikari as a traitor, BJP’s national general secretary and observer for Bengal Kailash Vijayvargiya reminded her how she had left the Congress in 1997 and formed her own party.