The party wants to win at least 24 of the 42 seats in Bengal, but the state unit is faction-ridden.
Ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, an internal report by the BJP paints a not so great picture for the West Bengal unit of the party. The report says, if the elections were held today, the party would not win as many seats as it won in 2019. This has caused a lot of concern in the top leadership of the party in Delhi.
The internal report prepared by the RSS and the BJP’s “anonymous” ground report team, after conducting a survey in West Bengal for more than a month, submitted that the party’s prospects in West Bengal has been going down after the BJP lost the 2021 Assembly elections.
The report states that the party has to do a lot of work in the south Bengal region, which has 36 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats from the state. Last time the BJP won 12 of these 36 seats, but that number may go down if corrective measures are not taken.
However, the BJP, according to the report, has been able to hold on to its support base in the north Bengal region, which has six Lok Sabha seats, all of which the BJP won in 2019, although work is needed in at least a couple of seats to repeat that performance.
Several senior leaders, both from within the BJP and the RSS, are reaching out to BJP MPs from the state who have sidelined themselves from the party activities, asking to resume their work for the party, to ensure that the BJP wins handsomely from Bengal.
The top leadership of the RSS has also reached out to BJP MPs with sizeable support among different communities and has instructed them to establish connect with these communities and ensure that they vote for the BJP in the Lok Sabha elections.
It is pertinent to mention here that the state unit of the BJP in Bengal is marred with factionalism and several attempts by the Central leadership of the BJP to solve problems within the Bengal unit have not been fruitful yet.
The deep-rooted infighting within the Bengal BJP is leading to the downfall of the BJP and the rise of the CPM. That the state unit of the West Bengal BJP is not being able to do enough to counter the TMC and CPM in the state has not gone down well with the top leadership of the party in Delhi.
Sources within the BJP in Delhi told this newspaper that the central leaders will start devoting more time to Bengal as they feel that they can win many seats from the state. Sources also said that in the next one month, the topmost leadership of the BJP, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah and BJP national president J.P. Nadda, is likely to the tour the state and not only hold rallies, but also hold organisational meetings with the state unit. Earlier, Amit Shah had given a target of 24 out of the 42 Lok Sabha seats for the BJP from West Bengal and the central BJP is determined to win that number from the state.