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‘UT status demanded for Bengal districts by MPs, not endorsed by party’: BJP
“The demands do not adhere to our party’s official stand. We see Bengal as one state,” Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh said.
The Bengal unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Tuesday said it neither endorses nor supports the demand for separate statehood or Union territory status for certain districts as raised by two of its Lok Sabha members.
“The demands do not adhere to our party’s official stand. We see Bengal as one state,” Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh said at a press conference on Tuesday afternoon amid strong reaction in political circles against the demands raised by John Barla, the MP from Alipurduar in north Bengal and Saumitra Khan, who represents the Bishnupur constituency in south Bengal’s Bankura district.
Barla, a tribal leader, joined the BJP in 2014 while Khan, who was the Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP from Bishnupur since 2014, switched over to the saffron camp before the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and retained the seat.
“These people joined the BJP in recent years. They have to toe the party line. It is a fact that large parts of north and south Bengal have been neglected for decades and local people have grievances against the state government. The leaders must have raised the demands out of frustration and anger because our workers are facing atrocity ever since the assembly polls ended but they cannot make such statements in public,” said Ghosh. He did not name Khan and Barla.
Last week, Barla said he will urge the Centre to either form a state or Union territory by clubbing the districts in north Bengal. On Monday, Khan voiced the same demand for certain parts of West Burdwan, Bankura, Purulia, West and East Midnapore and a part of Hooghly district. They were supported by a handful of local leaders and legislators from these regions while the BJP maintained its distance.
TMC workers have lodged complaints at several police stations in Bengal against Barla and Khan, accusing them of attempting to create disturbance.
“We will not allow anyone to split Bengal,” chief minister and TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee said last week and citizens vented their anger against the BJP on social media.
Incidentally, the BJP performed well in the regions for which the two MPs demanded separate status.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, as well as the recent state elections, the BJP outperformed the TMC in the north Bengal region. In 2019, the saffron camp bagged seven of the eight Lok Sabha seats in the eight districts starting from Malda to Darjeeling. In the state polls, two prominent TMC ministers lost in north Bengal while BJP candidates won 30 of the region’s 54 assembly segments where identity politics played a key role.
Although the BJP was trounced by the TMC in these polls in most parts of south Bengal, which accounts for 240 assembly and 34 Lok Sabha seats, the saffron camp managed to make inroads in Bankura, Purulia, West Burdwan, Nadia and parts of Hooghly and East and West Midnapore districts.
“I refuse to believe that the two MPs raised the demand without any support from their party. The BJP must be having a bigger plan,” Bengal Congress president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said.
In north Bengal, Barla’s demand has drawn strong criticism from tribal and Gorkha groups. Leaders of the Gorkha Jana Mukti Morcha in the Darjeeling hill region and the Greater Cooch Behar People’s Association (GCPA) in the plains have accused the BJP of trying to create unrest before the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
The BJP suffered a setback in north Bengal on Monday when Ganga Prasad Sharma, president of the unit in Alipurduar district, where the party bagged all five assembly seats in the recent assembly polls, joined the TMC.
