TAP TO UNMUTE Mukul Roy, founding member of the TMC with Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad | Photo Credit: ANI

New Delhi: After joining the Bharatiya Janata Party, former Trinamool Congress leader, Mukul Roy, who is also the co-founder of the party, said on Friday that he believed that the BJP was a "secular force", not "communal".

Flanked by Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and BJP's National General Secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya, Mukul Roy said, "I believe BJP is not a communal force, it is a secular force and it rules the country.

Ending days of speculations after he resigned from the Rajya Sabha and the TMC in October, Mukul Roy, once the second-in-command to TMC chief Mamata Banerjee, today joined the Bharatiya Janata Party after meeting with its senior leaders at the party headquarters in New Delhi.

Addressing the media after being formally inducted in the BJP, Roy said, "I believe in the leadership of Narendra Modi ji, Kailash Vijayvargiya ji and Amit Shah bhai, in the near future, BJP will come to power in West Bengal for the benefit of people of West Bengal".

He also recalled the times when the TMC fought the Lok Sabha elections in 1998 for the first time in alliance with the BJP and then again in 1999, when it was a member of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance. Following this, Mamata Banerjee, currently serving as the West Bengal Chief Minister, had joined the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's cabinet, Roy added.

"I feel without BJP, TMC could not have established (itself) then," he said.

Mukul Roy quits Trinamool Congress, Rajya Sabha; says 'a party should have comrades, not servants'

Meanwhile, Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad also hailed Roy's political acumen and his leadership and said, "Today a veteran public figure and political leader, Mukul Roy has joined BJP. He helped TMC come to power in West Bengal, and has been an MP for 12 years,"

He added that the "most notable feature" of Roy's political life is that for 30 years of the Left government led by the CPI-M "where voice of dissent had no place", he fought against "atrocities".

Stressing that Roy offered to join the BJP without any conditions, he said: "He is coming to BJP at a time when it is expanding its footprint in Bengal."

The former TMC leader, who used to be a close aide of TMC chief Mamata Banerjee and was one of the founding members of the party, quit the party and resigned as the Rajya Sabha MP in October.

Stating that he had resigned with a “heavy heart”, Roy had said that "one man party is not good for the country," and that he could not accept being treated as a “servant” in the party anymore, as party members were "comrades, not servants".

He was suspended by the TMC in September for six years for "anti- party activities".

(With IANS inputs)