Kolkata: Pictures of him with BJP stalwarts such as Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani adorn the walls of his office in Kolkata; the bookshelves include his own work on Syama Prasad Mookerjee, the founder of Jana Sangh.
For Tathagata Roy, even his party credentials are impressive — he headed the West Bengal unit of the BJP for four years between 2002 and 2006, and was a national executive member for 13 years (2002-2015).
Roy also served as the governor of Tripura (2015-2018) and of Meghalaya (2018-2020).
But over the past year, ever since his governorship term ended in April 2020, Roy says he has been struggling to obtain “active membership” of the BJP. He told ThePrint that he had given up the membership when he became Tripura governor in 2015.
An active membership is a step above the BJP’s ordinary membership, which just involves giving the party number a missed call. Ordinary members don’t take part in the BJP’s regular affairs. For active membership, one needs to apply, fill a form and submit a fee of Rs 200. Active members become a part of the party, can go to the party office and get involved in the party work.
In an exclusive chat with ThePrint, Roy said that to regain his active membership, he sent repeated requests, applications and sought meetings with senior central leaders, including general secretaries B.L. Santhosh and Kailash Vijayvargiya, but they were all ignored.
Instead, he told ThePrint, “pretty women, mostly the starlets who never had any...
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