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Amit Shah lands in Bengal today on first visit after 2021 state polls
Union home minister Amit Shah will address a BJP rally at Siliguri town in north Bengal on Thursday and meet Bengal BJP leaders in Kolkata on Friday.
KOLKATA: With union home minister Amit Shah scheduled to arrive in Bengal on Thursday on a two-day visit, speculations have started in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) state unit on the message he might give to the party’s rank and file where dissent and divisions have surfaced in the recent months.
Bengal BJP leaders said Shah will meet top state office-bearers, departmental heads, legislators and members of Parliament at 2pm on Friday at a hotel on the eastern outskirts of Kolkata.
“We have not been told whether he will address us together or hold one-on-one interactions,” a top state leader said on Wednesday evening.
This is Shah’s first visit to Bengal since the March-April assembly polls in 2021. The BJP won 77 of Bengal’s 294 seats while the Trinamool Congress (TMC) bagged 213. However, the BJP’s tally has actively come down to 70 after the party lost two assembly seats to the TMC in by-polls and five MLAs joined the TMC without resigning from the BJP.
Rumblings against the BJP Bengal unit’s current leadership touched a high on April 21 when former state president Dilip Ghosh called his successor Sukanta Majumdar an “inexperienced” leader.
Majumdar shot back a few days later saying Ghosh too was inexperienced when he was made BJP state president in 2015, six months after he was loaned to the party by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangha (RSS).
Majumdar, who succeeded Ghosh in September last year, has been drawing criticism from certain sections of the rank and file ever since the Bengal unit witnessed an organisational reshuffle in which several old-timers at the state and district levels were replaced in December.
The BJP has 42 organisational units for Bengal’s 23 districts. In a bid to accommodate those who were left out, Majumdar recently formed some new committees but that did not silence the critics.
The rumblings resurfaced after the party’s defeat in the by-polls at Kolkata’s Ballygunge assembly seat and West Burdwan district’s Asansol Lok Sabha segment on April 16.
Both seats were won by former BJP leaders who are now with the TMC. While the Ballygunge was won by former Union minister Babul Supriyo, the Asansol Lok Sabha seat was wrested by actor-turned politician Shatrughan Sinha. The TMC won the Asansol seat for the first time since Independence. It was in control of the Left till Supriyo wrested it in 2014 and retained it in 2019. His resignation led to the by-poll.
The loss of the Asansol seat has reduced the BJP’s Lok Sabha tally in Bengal from 18 to 17.
State leaders said that demands have also been raised to replace state general secretary (organisation) Amitava Chakravorty. He was recently summoned to Delhi by the central leaders.
On Thursday evening, Shah will address a BJP rally at Siliguri town in north Bengal where the party has more presence than the south Bengal districts. Earlier in the day, he will be attending two programmes of the Border Security Force (BSF) at North 24 Parganas district in south Bengal.
On Friday morning, Shah will fly to north Bengal to visit the Teen Bigha border with BSF officials. He will fly back to Kolkata. After meeting BJP leaders in his hotel, Shah will attend a cultural event to be held by the union ministry of culture to celebrate the inclusion of Durga Puja in UNESCO’s list of Intangible Cultural Heritage. The event will be held at the Victoria Memorial Hall.
Meanwhile, TMC leaders attempted to ignore Shah’s visit. “So many leaders come and go. What can we say?” said cabinet minister Partha Chatterjee.
