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Assembly results fallout: BJP to focus more on Bengal

Dec 17, 2018 06:56 PM IST

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party president Amit Shah have both expressed their keenness on addressing public meetings in the state at the earliest.

Following the electoral setback in five states, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national leadership has decided to focus more on West Bengal, leaders of BJP’s Bengal unit said.

“Anti-incumbency against the state governments cost us several seats in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. In Bengal, we are set to gain from anti-incumbency against Trinamool Congress,” said BJP state unit president Dilip Ghosh.

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A senior Bengal BJP leader who did not wish to be named said Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party president Amit Shah have both expressed their keenness on addressing public meetings in the state at the earliest.

“We have urged our central leaders to provide us with more organisational support. They have assured us of full cooperation,” Ghosh said.

BJP president Amit Shah has told the state unit that its target should be to win 22 of Bengal’s 42 Lok Sabha seats. Presently BJP has two, the highest the party or its predecessor, Bharatiya Jana Sangh, ever got in Bengal where the Congress ruled almost uninterruptedly between 1947 and 1977, when the Left Front came in power only to be ousted by the Trinamool Congress in 2011.

The rising importance of Bengal in the saffron agenda became evident on December 13, when BJP changed the composition of its team for meeting bureaucrats of the state – the chief secretary, home secretary and director general of police – for discussing its proposed 40-day Ganatantra Bachao Yatra (rally to save democracy) that is to cover all of Bengal’s 42 parliamentary seats.

While party’s Lok Sabha election management committee’s head for Bengal, Mukul Roy, and state unit vice presidents Jay Prakash Majumdar and Pratap Banerjee were scheduled to meet the government officials, eventually national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya and state president Dilip Ghosh replaced Majumdar and Banerjee.

“The changes in the team were made at the last moment after the party president insisted that the top three leaders for the state must attend the meeting,” said a member of BJP’s state committee was did not want to be identified.

Following the government’s denial of permission, communicated to BJP state unit on Saturday, party’s national general secretary Bhupinder Yadav flew in to Kolkata early on Sunday to discuss the next plan with state leaders.

BJP leaders claim Lok Sabha constituencies that they will surely win are Krishnagar, Jhargram, Purulia, Birbhum, Malda North, Raiganj, Cooch Behar, Alipurduar, Darjeeling and Asansol. Currently, they have the last two.

Apart from these, there are about a dozen seats, such as Serampore, Uluberia, Dumdum, Jadavpur, Midnapore etc. where BJP leaders claim to have made inroads.

The aborted rath yatra was so far the most comprehensive and spectacular political programme designed to kick start the party’s campaign for the general elections. BJP state leaders claim that irrespective of whether the yatra takes off or not, Narendra Modi and Amit Shah will address at least a dozen public meetings before the Lok Sabha elections.

Presently, four national leaders, Kailash Vijayvargiya, Shiv Prakash, Suresh Pujari and Arvind Menon guide the state unit. More organisers from other states may be deputed to Bengal in the coming days, said a general secretary of BJP state unit who did not want to be identified.

Political analysts Amal Mukhopadhyay and Biswanath Chakraborty feel BJP’s decision to invest more time and effort in Bengal is a pragmatic call.

“It is correct reading of the political situation. They are most likely to gain from resentment against the Mamata Banerjee government in Bengal,” said Mukhopadhyay, former principal of Presidency College and a professor of political science.

According to Chakraborty, BJP is likely to gain not only from grievances against Trinamool Congress but also from a possible revival of the state Congress unit.

“The size of the crowd and the enthusiasm among supporters at Congress’ meeting in Kolkata the day after the election results made it clear that the state unit has received fresh oxygen. If Congress manages to grow in Bengal, there is every possibility of the party eating into a share of Muslim votes that Trinamool is so desperately banking on,” Chakraborty said.

Incidentally, Congress influence is limited to some pockets in Bengal’s three Muslim-majority districts – Murshidabad, Malda and Uttar Dinajpur.

Over the past few years, thanks to the Congress’ decline at the national level, Trinamool was gradually eating into the party’s support base in these three districts as well as rest of the state.

BJP in West Bengal showed signs of emerging as the principal opposition force in 2014 Lok Sabha elections when it surprised one and all by bagging 17% of the polled votes.

Though its percentage of vote dipped to 10.2% in the 2016 Assembly elections, and it managed to win only 3 of the state’s 294 seats, the party established itself as the main opposition after bagging more seats than the Left and the Congress in the 2018 panchayat polls.

Senior Congress leader and the Leader of the Opposition in the state Assembly, Abdul Mannan, however, said the BJP was daydreaming.

“Election results in five states have created fresh enthusiasm among our supporters. We are expecting Congress supporters who switched over to BJP and Trinamool to return again,” Mannan said.

Trinamool Congress leaders mocked at BJP’s aspiration on their home ground. “In the context of Bengal, BJP is as much a political entity as a bat is a bird,” said Kolkata mayor and urban development minister Firhad Hakim.

Chief minister Mamata Banerjee, on the other hand, has vowed to win all 42 seats.

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