lit a candle 4h agoOnly came across his story through a documentary on Bengal's 2011 election, the way he was described moving leaders from one party to another without ever raising his voice. Rare to see that kind of strategist get proper attention outside India. 71 is no age.
Their story
Mukul Roy (17 April 1954 to 23 February 2026) was an Indian politician from West Bengal who became known as the "Chanakya of Bengal politics" for his skill as a backroom organiser and election strategist. A founding member of the All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) alongside Mamata Banerjee, he served…
Mukul Roy (17 April 1954 to 23 February 2026) was an Indian politician from West Bengal who became known as the "Chanakya of Bengal politics" for his skill as a backroom organiser and election strategist. A founding member of the All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) alongside Mamata Banerjee, he served as the party's general secretary and de facto second in command for more than fifteen years, sat in the Rajya Sabha from 2006 to 2017, and was Union Minister of Railways in 2012 in the second Manmohan Singh government.
Roy was born in Kanchrapara, in the industrial belt of North 24 Parganas district, the only son of Jugal Nath Roy, a railway employee, and Rekha Roy. He grew up in a modest middle-class home with four sisters. He studied at Harneet High School in Kanchrapara, where relatives said he ranked among the top students, and took an honours degree in chemistry at Rishi Bankim Chandra College in Naihati, affiliated to the University of Calcutta. He later earned an MA in public administration from Madurai Kamaraj University in 2006. As a young man he represented his district in cricket and badminton, and Test cricket remained a lifelong passion; even at the height of his career he was known to slip into Eden Gardens to watch a Test match.
His political life began in student politics in college, first with left-leaning student groups and then with the Congress. His early mentor was the Barrackpore Congress leader Mrinal Singha Roy. Before becoming a full-time politician he worked as a contractor and in the electrical goods business. In the Youth Congress he grew close to Mamata Banerjee, then the state Youth Congress president, and for years commuted daily by train between Kanchrapara and Kolkata. When Banerjee broke away from the Congress, Roy went with her. He was the first signatory of the new Trinamool Congress, formed at the end of 1997 and launched in January 1998, and he submitted the party's symbol to the Election Commission of India.
Roy became the party's general secretary and its face in New Delhi. He contested the Jagatdal assembly seat in 2001 but lost. In April 2006 he was elected to the Rajya Sabha, and from 2009 he led the TMC in the upper house. Colleagues remembered him as an organisation man who kept the phone numbers and personal details of district, block and booth level workers at his fingertips. He is widely credited with the defections and alliance building that helped the TMC win the 2011 West Bengal assembly election, ending 34 years of Left Front rule.
In the UPA II government he was sworn in as Minister of State for Shipping on 28 May 2009, and after Banerjee became Chief Minister in 2011 he was moved to the Railways as Minister of State. He was removed from that post in July 2011 after he declined Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's direction to visit the site of the Guwahati to Puri Express derailment in Assam. On 20 March 2012, after Dinesh Trivedi was forced out over a passenger fare increase, Roy was sworn in as Cabinet Minister of Railways and rolled back the hike. His tenure ended in September 2012 when the TMC left the UPA over foreign investment in retail. During his term he backed the "DU Gyan Uday Express", a special train that took Delhi University students on an educational tour of India.
His later career was shadowed by the Saradha chit fund scandal and the 2016 Narada sting, in which he was named and questioned by investigators, although he was not arrested. He was removed as TMC general secretary in 2015. In September 2017 the party suspended him for six years for anti-party activities after he announced his resignation, and in October 2017 he resigned from the Rajya Sabha. He joined the Bharatiya Janata Party on 3 November 2017, saying it was his "proud privilege" to work under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In the BJP he helped draw many TMC leaders across and is credited with the party's gains in the 2018 panchayat polls and its 18 West Bengal seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha election. He was named BJP national vice-president in 2020 and won the Krishnanagar Uttar assembly seat on a BJP ticket in May 2021.
Weeks later, on 11 June 2021, he returned to the TMC with his son Subhranshu, and Banerjee called it a homecoming. He chaired the Assembly's Public Accounts Committee from July 2021 to June 2022. Because he never resigned his BJP-won seat, his status became the subject of a long anti-defection fight. The Calcutta High Court disqualified him in November 2025, a ruling the Supreme Court stayed in early 2026. In July 2021 his wife of four decades, Krishna Roy, died of cardiac arrest in Chennai.
In his final years Roy suffered from Parkinson's disease, dementia, hydrocephalus that required brain surgery, and kidney problems, and was repeatedly hospitalised; his son said he had been in hospital for long periods and had been in a coma. He died of a massive cardiac arrest at about 1:30 am on 23 February 2026 at Apollo Hospital in Salt Lake, Kolkata, aged 71. His body lay in the West Bengal Legislative Assembly and at his Kanchrapara home before a procession of about eight kilometres to the Halishahar crematorium, where he was cremated that evening with Abhishek Banerjee walking beside his son. Tributes came from Mamata Banerjee, Prime Minister Modi, Suvendu Adhikari and leaders across parties, a reflection of a career that shaped the rise of both the TMC and the BJP in Bengal.
Biography adapted from Wikipedia; NDTV; Hindustan Times; The Hindu; The Indian Express; The Federal; Anandabazar Patrika; The Wall; New Indian Express; Firstpost.
In their own words
“Today I have joined BJP and it's my proud privilege to work under PM Modi.”
On joining the BJP in New Delhi, 3 November 2017 (The Indian Express)
“My fight would continue as a soldier of BJP to restore democracy in our state. I would request everyone to put the concoctions and conjectures to rest. I am resolute in my political path.”
Post on X, 8 May 2021, about a month before he returned to the TMC
“I am happy that I have been able to come out. I can see old faces here. I am happy that Bengal will regain its old glory under the leadership of Mamata Banerjee, who is a national leader.”
On rejoining the TMC in Kolkata, 11 June 2021 (Hindustan Times)
“I will never return to BJP and I will never be with them.”
Press conference on rejoining the TMC, 11 June 2021 (Firstpost)
“Mukul da was a real organisational man. He had all the personal details, including phone numbers, of district, block, and booth-level leaders at his fingertips.”
TMC leader Mukul Bairagya, recalled in The Federal obituary, February 2026
Photos
2President Pratibha Patil administers the oath to Mukul Roy as Cabinet Minister, Rashtrapati Bhavan, 20 March 2012
Mar 2012 · by People Forever
Mukul Roy, 2017
by People Forever
he was the quiet architect behind a lot of what happened there, good that it reached you