Most of us have read or watched the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Imagine Uncle Shakuni having a tiff with Duryodhana just before the Kurukshetra war and joining the Pandava camp. Would that have absolved him of all the grave sins that he had committed? Would it have been right on the part of the Pandavas to have the shrewd and cunning Shakuni in their camp to fight the Kauravas? In Kaliyuga, this is exactly the kind of thing that Bharatvarsha is witnessing of late.
Our netas have absolutely no qualms in moving from one political party to another or shifting to a party whose ideology is the exact opposite to that of their former party. So when we have Gaurav Bhatia, who till a few months ago was as secular as one could get, joining the BJP and heaping praises on RSS, it is amusing and at the same time leaves a very bad taste.
Shazia Ilmi started out as a firebrand leader from Aam Aadmi Party and during the campaign for 2014 General Elections, she asked some of the Muslims to be less secular and more communal. A year later, she joined the BJP, which is largely seen as a Hindutva party.
Narayan Rane started out with the then pro Hindu party Shiv Sena only to join the Congress later. It is a different matter altogether that now the Shiv Sena has suddenly turned secular and started praising Mamata Bannerjee, the epitome of appeasement and communal politics. If on one hand, we have SM Krishna switching over from Congress to BJP at the ripe age of 85, we also have Navjot Singh Sidhu deserting the BJP to join the Congress just before the Punjab elections. As they say, there are no permanent friends or enemies in politics and it is all about individual gains (gains can be monetary or non monetary).
When Narendra Modi and Amit Shah came up with their dream of a Congress Mukth Bharat, the idea went down very well with the masses as can be seen from most of the poll results since the 2014 General Elections. After three years, we have seen that the BJP has not been hesitant in poaching key members from other parties to achieve this dream. The latest politician to join the party changing bandwagon is Mukul Roy of the TMC, who joined the BJP and expressed happiness and pride to be working under the leadership of PM Modi.
So just who is Mukul Roy?
Mukul Roy started his political career as a Youth Congress leader and was then a founding member of the Trinamool Congress. He was elected to the Rajya Sabha and during the scam tainted UPA 2, he was first the Minister of Shipping and later the railway Minister when Mamata Bannerjee had a disagreement with her party member Dinesh Trivedi. He has been questioned by the CBI for his involvement in the Saradha scam, a political scandal caused by the collapse of a Ponzi scheme run by Saradha Group. At that time, the whole coterie of TMC leaders were firmly behind Mukul Roy and accused the Central Government of political vendetta and having the CBI harass him. He is also an accused in the Narada scam, which refers to a series of sting videos shot over a period of two years that shows several ministers of the ruling West Bengal government including Mukul Roy accepting bribes. This investigation was conducted by Narada Group and hence the name Narada scam.
The BJP government is today celebrating one year of Demonetization, terming it as a historic and bold step to cleanse the economy of the menace of black money. They have even gone ahead and termed Nov 8th as Anti Black Money Day. What were Mukul Roy ’s views on demonetization then? When Demonetization was announced, Mukul Roy was a bitter critic of the move and was responsible for organizing protests in multiple states. He and the Trinamool Congress were demanding nothing short of an absolute rollback and went to the extent of saying that PM Modi is egoistic and is trying to conceal his failures by changing the rules every day. He also mentioned that digitization has been promoted by the central government to cover up for the failure of demonetization and there was absolutely no link between corruption and digitization. Now that he has officially joined the BJP, wonder what his views on demonetization are now.
One would be equally interested to know BJP’s view on Mukul Roy ’s comments back then.
Anyone who loves the country would want a Congress Mukth and a secular parties mukth Bharat. Parties like Congress and TMC have been a curse to this great country of ours and have done irreparable damage. The BJP is by no means a perfect party and has had its share of corrupt and incompetent netas in its ranks, but is unfortunately the only non pseudo secular and right leaning party we have in India today. Much as we would like a Congress mukth bharat, we would also like a Congress mukth BJP and when people like Mukul Roy are inducted, the BJP is only disappointing its core supporters. Of course, this is not the first time when the BJP has taken its supporters for granted and will definitely not be the last time either.
