Tathagata Roy likened BJP leader Kailash Vijayavargiya with a dog. (File)
Tathagata Roy, a former Governor, has likened BJP leader Kailash Vijayavargiya with a dog in social media posts that have stunned the party.
A former Bengal BJP chief, Tathagata Roy has been critical of the party's leaders after its election debacle in the state earlier this year.
His post showing a pug alongside Kailash Vijayavargiya was a response to a user wondering why he remained in charge of Bengal after the BJP's defeat to Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress. The post was captioned: "Vodafone again in Bengal" - a reference to the pug that starred in the ad campaigns of the mobile phone operator.
The user had commented that Kailash Vijayavargiya, "the leader of the pack", had never been mentioned in post-mortems of the party's poll performance and that "perhaps his close rapport with top leaders is saving him".
Tathagata Roy, who was Governor of Meghalaya and Tripura, is known for his blunt and controversial statements. Lately, many of his zingers have been directed at his own party.
After the BJP's defeat in Bengal, he delivered unfiltered criticism of the party's Bengal leaders like Mr Vijayavargiya and Dilip Ghosh, blaming their decisions on candidates.
"Kailash-Dilip-Shiv-Arvind (KDSA) foursome have dragged names of our respected Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) and Home Minister (Amit Shah) through mud and have sullied the name of the biggest political party in the world. Sitting atop Agarwal Bhavan of Hastings (BJP's election office in Bengal) and 7-star hotels, they have distributed tickets to incoming garbage from Trinamool Congress," Tathagata Roy had tweeted in May, soon after the Bengal results.