Bihar battle won, BJP turns focus to Bengal, vows to transform it into Gujarat

With Bihar elections getting over and the festive season coming to an end, the Bharatiya Janata Party is now shifting its entire focus to West Bengal, diving headlong into the poll campaign for the crucial 2021 assembly polls.

While on one hand, the BJP has made a series of organisational changes with an eye on the polls over the past few weeks, on the other, party’s top guns are visiting the state one after another to take stock of the battle preparations as the polls are drawing nearer.

Leaders of the saffron party’s Bengal unit are also gradually upping the ante against the ruling Trinamool Congress and are promising to intensify the poll campaign further in the coming days with sharper attacks on the ruling party.

BJP’s IT cell chief, Amit Malviya, who has been recently appointed as the co-incharge of West Bengal, arrived in the state on Monday. Party leaders saw Malviya’s appointment as a thrust by the BJP’s top leadership on the battle on social media in the run up to the Bengal polls.

BL Santosh, BJP’s national general secretary (organization), is also arriving on Tuesday and a series of party meets are scheduled.

“For the last two to three elections fought in Bengal, Malviya has managed the social media and IT strategies of the party. He is well aware of the issues in Bengal. His arrival would further strengthen the IT wing of the party’s state unit. Santosh is also arriving to hold some meetings,” said Dilip Ghosh, president of the BJP’s state unit.

Earlier in November, Union home minister Amit Shah was on a two-day visit to Bengal to take stock of the party’s organisational preparedness. Shah’s Bengal visit also helped to assuage strained nerves in the party’s state unit. It was only after Shah’s visit that the BJP released the list of its district youth leaders.

On Monday, the BJP upped its ante against the TMC as Ghosh, while speaking to the media, said that the BJP aims to transform Bengal into Gujarat.

“Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee sometimes says that efforts are to transform Bengal into Gujarat. I would say this is 100% true. We would turn Bengal into Gujarat. Now people from Bengal need to migrate to Gujarat to get jobs. In the coming years, people will not have to go to Gujarat. They will get jobs in Bengal,” said Ghosh.

Leaders of the ruling TMC have criticised the BJP saying the words Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh invoke pictures of police encounters.

“The problem with Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh is police encounters. Around 2000 people have been murdered in Gujarat. Several people like Ishrat Jahan have been killed in encounters. So we don’t want Bengal to be turned into Gujarat. Tata’s Nano car manufacturing factory has also closed down in Gujarat,” said Firhad Hakim, state minister and TMC leader.

Strong supervision by the BJP’s central leadership is being viewed by state office-bearers as a measure to stop internal rumblings and to iron out differences between leaders who earlier worked for the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and those who joined the BJP in recent years, leaving the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC).

Although the BJP won 18 of the state’s 42 Lok Sabha seats in 2019, party leaders said the assembly polls would not be a cakewalk, especially in the 15 south Bengal districts, where most of the assembly segments are located. Under instructions from Shah, the party is now strengthening the organisation right down to the polling booth level in south Bengal districts.