Mukul Roy dies, Feb. 23 -- Veteran politician and former railway minister Mukul Roy died of cardiac arrest at a private hospital on Monday, his family said. He was 71.

Roy breathed his last at 1.30 AM at the private hospital, his son Subhranshu Roy said, adding that he had been in a coma for the last several days.

Roy was a founder member of TMC when the party was formed in 1998. Later, following differences with the party, he joined the BJP in 2017.

Roy was once considered a close aide of Mamata Banerjee and often regarded as TMC's second-in-command and key strategist or 'Chanakya' of the party. But Roy surprised many when he jumped ship to join the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2017.

What followed was a series of defections from t...