Many MLAs and MPs are unhappy with the way Dilip Ghosh has been running the affairs of the party.
New Delhi: Major disenchantment is brewing within the Bengal unit of the BJP, with a large section of the party workers, including several MLAs and MPs, being extremely “unhappy” with the way the party’s state president Dilip Ghosh has been running the affairs of the party.
Top sources within the party also claim that if the central leadership of the party does not act in time, a handful of MLAs and MPs would start to speak out in the open against the way the affairs of the party is being run in the state.
A senior BJP leader from Bengal told The Sunday Guardian, “The party has gone in the hands of the select few who do not want to listen to the grievances of the party workers. Even MLAs and MPs have no place to voice their concerns within the party. The top leadership of the party in Bengal has become complacent; they are not taking much interest in the affairs of the party and what is happening in the districts. The MLAs who go to voice their opinion are shoed away. There is major factionalism brewing within the party. You are only heard if you are close to the faction that runs the BJP in Bengal.”
Another BJP leader, who did not wish to be named, told this correspondent that “if the state unit is not overhauled in the coming days, you will either see a large number of party workers stopping to work for the party or switch sides”.
“The state unit requires an overhaul. It is due for a very long time. The party needs a strong and a dynamic face that talks to their party workers and understands their problems,” the BJP leader said. Sources also told this correspondent about how a very senior leader of the BJP and a sitting MP and former Minister in the Union government, who had come to meet the state president, was asked to leave without even being given an audience.
A similar story also runs about another MP from Bengal who has fallen out with the state president and is allegedly being sidelined by the state unit of the party due to the sour relationship the MP shares with the president.
Another BJP MP from Bengal Saumitra Khan had on record criticised the way Dilip Ghosh has been functioning in Bengal and had submitted his resignation from the post of the Yuva Morcha President, later recalling the resignation after the central leadership of the party intervened. Senior leaders of the party also blame the central observer Kailash Vijayvargiya who has been missing from the ground ever since the election results were declared in Bengal.
Sources within the Bengal BJP also told this correspondent that as many as five MLAs are already in talks with the TMC, since they are “unhappy” with the state unit and their “autocratic” style of working. These five MLAs, sources said, could jump the ship on 21 July, when the ruling Trinamool Congress celebrates their Saheed Diwas in Kolkata.