Refusing to either confirm or deny speculation that Trinamool Congress leader Mukul Roy was likely to join Congress, senior Congress leader and Rajya Sabha MP Rajiv Shukla Monday said the doors of the party are open for everybody. “The doors of Congress are open for all. Anyone who comes from Trinamool will be a ghar wapsi for him or her. Roy has his organisational strength and the party will definitely like to make full use of that if he expresses his interest in switching over. But all said and done, the final decision will be taken by the party high command,” Shukla said at a press conference during his visit to Kolkata as a part of Congress’ campaign against the one year of the Modi government. The comment comes in the backdrop of Roy’s strained relation with Trinamool chief and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. Roy had recently expressed his desire to join the Congress and also met Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi in Delhi in this regard. [related-post] Asked whether Congress would induct someone who had been accused of being involved in Saradha scam, Shukla said: “Law will take its own course we have nothing to do with that. But if someone has a speciality to strengthen the party organisation, we will look at it only. Law will do its job and we are not in the government that we will save someone from law.” Shukla also noted that the process of ED and CBI investigation has become slow in Saradha scam and the people should think why it had all of a sudden slowed down. Slamming the Modi government, he claimed the PM had created history by losing his popularity within a year. “No other PM had ever become so unpopular within a year. It had taken at least two to years. The main reason being that he had made promises left right and centre and had not been able to live up to those,” said Shukla. “He had promised of bringing Dawood Ibrahim to India within 15 days of his government coming to power but he has failed to do so. He seems to be doing the job of the foreign minister, who herself (Sushma Swaraj) has not gone abroad so much as the PM,” he added. Drawing a parallel with the TMC government, Sukhla said that both Mamata and Modi had done nothing for farmers. “Farmer suicide cases have been rampant in Bengal and other BJP-ruled states owing to anti-farmer policies,” he added. Terming BJP’s pre-poll slogan of ‘achhe din’ as a joke, Shukla said: “Achhe din had come for those who have come to power and corporate houses close to top BJP leaders. What about the clean Ganga project? Has Ganga here been cleaned? While Modi is busy blowing his own trumpet, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh used to work silently. Modi has not made any new policy but has only adopted those of Singh.” On whether there is possibility of an alliance with the Trinamool in the next year’s Assembly polls, Shukla said: “In Bengal, we have been fighting the last few elections on our own. We have been fighting hard. The party high command decided by witnessing the given situation at that point of time. In the present situation in Bengal, we will fight on our own.”
