Earlier this month, Mukul Roy was suspended for 6 years and simultaneously quit Trinamool
In Kolkata, the Trinamool Congress is holding its core committee meeting, but some things are very different from the past. Chief among them is the absence of Mukul Roy.
The former MP and railway minister was once called the Chanakya of the party who made the most of Mamata Bnaerjee's charisma to catapult Trinamool to dizzying heights in less than 20 years.
Earlier this month, he was suspended for six years and simultaneously quit the party. He is reportedly set to join the BJP any day now.
How will Trinamool manage without him? No sweat at all, they say, adding "Mukul Roy is history." The future is fresh leaders like Mamata Banerjee nephew and party MP Abhishek Banerjee who may get a leading role in the run up to panchayat polls due early next year.
The other big break from the past is that the core committee meeting is being held at an auditorium, Nazrul Manch, and some 3,000 Trinamool leaders are expected to attend. Usually, the core committee meet was held at Mamata Banerjee's office cum residence with less than a hundred leaders in attendance.
The core committee meeting is also being held at a time when the Trinamool is under intense scrutiny primarily in the Narada scam. A dozen leaders are named in the chargesheet. Just yesterday, MP Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar was at the office of the Enforcement Directorate for questioning. Many more leaders are expected to be summoned shortly.
Mukul Roy, too, has been summoned by the Enforcement Directorate next week. As former party general secretary and a key confidant of Mamata Banerjee in the past, he is believed to know of several skeletons in the Trinamool.