A BJP leader from West Bengal, Tathagata Roy was brought to Tripura as the governor of the state in 2015. Roy has now stepped into limelight after his controversial tweets made headlines, and risked his position as the constitutional head of the tiny northeast state.
Roy has been a controversial man since the beginning of his political career in 1990. Before that, he was part of the Calcutta Metro railway project. Being one of the finest civil engineers of India, he designed the Calcutta Metro. Later, he took voluntary retirement and became a professor of Jadavpur University. He became the head of the construction engineering department.
He was a fine student and came first in every school, college and university exam. He graduated in engineering from BE College in Shibpur at Howrah. After graduation, he joined the Indian Railway and worked in the Calcutta Metro project during the era of then railway minister Barkat Gani Khan Chowdhury.
During this time, he became acquainted with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and then pracharak, Narendra Modi. Friendship blossomed and grew between them.
It was Roy, who during the Gujarat riot was the first in the BJP to come in support of Modi and called him a “courageous leader”.
In 2002, Roy became the president of the BJP in West Bengal, but his headstrong nature didn't let him continue for long. He was an anti-communist and known to be close to Mamata Banerjee during the alliance days of the BJP and Trinamool Congress. However, at times he refused to accept Mamata as the leader of the alliance because of her alleged erratic behaviour.
When Mamata came to power, Roy became a strong critic of Mamata, and seeing her highhandedness, he called Mamata the “student of communists in Bengal”.
Interestingly, his younger brother Saugata Roy is an MP and senior leader of Trinamool Congress. Both the brothers have close links, but stay away from each others' politics.
In 2014, when Modi was fielded as a prime minister candidate, Roy was fielded in south Kolkata, which was earlier held by Mamata Banerjee. BJP insiders said Modi wanted to use Roy’s skill for Indian Railways as a whole. But the 70-year-old leader was then defeated by Mamata. However, Roy secured more than 2 lakh votes over Mamata’s close aide Subrata Bakshi in her own assembly segment in Bhawanipur. In other assembly segments, however, he lost to Bakshi.
After the defeat, Roy was brought to Tripura as the governor. Now, he seems to have picked up from where he had left in Kolkata.