A giant killer without a party: How Saryu Roy defeated Raghubar Das

Roy almost single-handedly engineered electoral defeat of Raghubar Das. He is also credited with derailing political careers of Lalu Prasad and Madhu Koda

It is unusual for a chief minister to lose his own assembly seat along with his party’s majority. It’s even rarer when it happens to a chief minister who’s kept that seat in five successive elections. And it’s unheard of when the giant killer is not supported by the winning combination of parties but contested on an independent platform.

Yet, all this happened last week in Jharkhand to Raghubar Das, who’d steered the state administration for a full five-year term, with full backing from the leadership of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He’d won from his home seat of Jamshedpur East in 2014 with two-thirds of the vote; this time, there was a 30 per cent vote swing against him. All engineered in barely three weeks.

Saryu Roy, 68, the man who did all this almost single-handed, was in fact his cabinet colleague for the past five years. In a formal sense he’d begun speaking out — publicly — against the working style of Das for the past two years. Appeals to the apex leadership to intervene had no effect; the leaders trusted Das, who also controlled ticket distribution at the time of election. Denied ticket from his nearby constituency, Roy declared he’d make good the insult. He didn’t do the time-honoured trick of defecting to the rival combine — he said he’d contest as an independent at the chief minister’s home turf. Nor did he play safe in campaigning — he frontally attacked the politically formidable duo of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his lieutenant, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, for protecting Das.

“The Raghubar daag won’t be saved by either Modi detergent or Amit Shah laundry,” he proclaimed. It happened exactly that way.

Just who is this man? Interestingly, someone who’s come from within the same party ranks, right from the student days (he’s a postgraduate in physics) of the late 1960s and early 1970s, when he was a functionary in the undivided Bihar unit of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, part of the legendary JP movement. There’s an old story on him from those days, recounted to this reporter by former RSS ideologue Govindacharya, on a secret meeting of movement organisers (including Lalu Prasad). “The police raided the Khadi Ashram, where we were meeting,” says Govindacharya, “and there was a general rush to escape immediately. But not Roy — he said he wouldn’t go without his footwear, first searched for it, put it on, and only then got going, unlike the others.” 

Clearly, he’s someone not easily cowed by sudden adversity. He went on to join the Janata Party with the rest of the Jana Sangh, and then the Janata Dal and BJP. In due course, goes the story vouched for by reliable sources, a team of Saryu Roy, Sushil Modi (now deputy chief minister of Bihar), and Ravi Shankar Prasad (Union cabinet minister) was formed to research on issues the party could raise. Modi handled political issues, Prasad the legal ones, and Roy had responsibility for public relations and the media. 

And, he was assigned, among other things, to check reported irregularities in the state’s animal husbandry department. 

One consequence was the massive fodder scam, which derailed Lalu Prasad’s political career. Saryu Roy went on to nab another scalp — he is generally credited with keeping the spotlight on the irregularities in mine allotments after Jharkhand was formed — it duly ended in the jailing of Madhu Koda, once chief minister.

How he joined the BJP is somehow another story. He had a close friends’ group in Patna. A source said in a closed-door meeting, a few leaders of the Janata Dal were discussing the probable candidate who could be placed in the BJP for coordination and who could be easily assimilated in that party. And this candidate of course was Roy. 

A political analyst says that All Jharkhand Students’ Union chief Sudesh Mahto helped in mobilising “Kurmi” voters in Roy’s support. He says many RSS volunteers and members of the Swadeshi Jagaran Manch also helped Roy in campaigning and arranging funds.

What lies ahead? “I’m going to follow up on all the issues I had raised against Das” is Roy’s statement in an interview with Business Standard.

Formally, he’s a man without a party, on his own. His record, however, shows the new rulers of Jharkhand would be wise to not underestimate the man.