KOLKATA
B.L. Santhosh, the BJP’s National General Secretary (Organisation), is in Kolkata to hold a post-mortem into the party’s defeat in the Dhupguri by-elections.
The BJP lost the seat to the Trinamool Congress by a margin of over 3,000 votes. Santhosh is expected to meet with party leaders and workers to understand the reasons for the defeat. He is also likely to hold discussions with state unit chief, Sukanta Majumdar, and other state leaders. He is likely to stay in the state till Sunday. Santhosh is seen as the most powerful person in the BJP after the triumvirate of Narendra Modi-Amit Shah and party president Jagat Prakash Nadda. The BJP’s defeat in Dhupguri is a setback for the party which is trying to make inroads in West Bengal. The party had won the seat in the 2021 Assembly elections and the bypoll was necessitated due to the death of the BJP incumbent. Santhosh’s visit to Kolkata is seen as an attempt to boost the morale of party workers and ensure the BJP does not lose any more ground. The party’s national secretary and the only Bengal face in the national executive, Anupam Hazra, has already called for “proper” self-assessment and fixing of the failure to fill organisational gaps which led to the defeat in Dhupguri.
“I think it is high time that there is proper self-assessment and organisational gaps are fixed ahead of the Lok Sabha polls. We should take measures to fix our lacunae at the earliest,” Hazra said. The TMC wrested the seat with its candidate, college professor Nirmal Chandra Roy, winning with a margin of 3,313 votes. His nearest rival was BJP’s Tapasi Roy, the widow of a CRPF jawan killed in a terrorist attack in Jammu and Kashmir in 2021.
Congress-backed CPI (M) candidate Ishwar Chandra Roy was a distant third. Former BJP state president and MP Dilip Ghosh said it is “quite natural” that the party in power wins bypolls. “But at the same time, we must also have some sort of self-assessment regarding the results,” he said. With the defeat in Dhupguri, the BJP has lost all bye-elections since 2021 in the state and its official number of seats in the state Assembly has dropped to 74 from 77. Six BJP MLAs have switched to the TMC but are yet to resign.