Veteran West Bengal politician and former Union Railway Minister Mukul Roy passed away in the early hours of Monday at a private hospital in Kolkata. He was 71. According to his family, Roy died around 1:30 am after suffering a cardiac arrest while undergoing treatment. Roy had been battling multiple health problems for years and had largely withdrawn from public life. Doctors had earlier confirmed he was suffering from dementia and Parkinson’s disease, and he underwent brain surgery in 2023. His condition worsened further after a fall in 2024 that required surgery for a blood clot.
A founding member of the Trinamool Congress in 1998, Roy was widely regarded as one of the party’s most astute organisers and strategists, earning the reputation of the “Chanakya of Bengal politics.” He rose to become one of the closest confidants of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and was once considered the party’s second-in-command. His organisational skills played a key role in building the party’s grassroots machinery and contributed to the historic 2011 election that ended decades of Left Front rule in West Bengal. At the national level, Roy served in the Union government during UPA-II, first as Minister of State for Shipping and later as Railway Minister in 2012 after the resignation of Dinesh Trivedi.
Roy’s political journey was marked by dramatic shifts. After differences with the Trinamool leadership and controversies surrounding national-level probes, he joined the Bharatiya Janata Party in 2017. Within the BJP, he emerged as a key strategist and played a significant role in expanding the party’s organisation in West Bengal, helping it win 18 Lok Sabha seats in 2019 and establish itself as the principal opposition in the state. He contested the 2021 West Bengal Assembly elections on a BJP ticket from Krishnanagar Uttar and won the seat. Soon after, however, he returned to the Trinamool Congress, though his declining health kept him away from active politics. He was brought back to the party by Mamata Banerjee herself, a move that has seldom been witnessed in the past. His return to TMC after winning as a BJP MLA, however, triggered legal proceedings under anti-defection rules. In November 2025, the Calcutta High Court ordered his disqualification as an MLA, though the Supreme Court stayed the ruling in January 2026.
In his last years, Roy’s deteriorating health and repeated hospitalisations meant he stayed out of mainstream political activity. His long career - spanning Congress, TMC and BJP - mirrored the shifting political currents of West Bengal over three decades. For supporters, he remained the master strategist who helped shape TMC’s rise; for critics, a symbol of Bengal’s intensely competitive political realignments. He is survived by his family. Funeral arrangements are expected to be announced by relatives later in the day.
