The fabrication was brought to the notice of the top leadership by BJP’s General Secretary and Bengal in-charge Sunil Bansal.
NEW DELHI: The Bengal unit of the BJP has come on the radar of Union Home Minister Amit Shah and national BJP president J.P. Nadda for submitting “fabricated” reports about the organisational capabilities of the party in West Bengal.
This was brought to the notice of the top leadership of the party by BJP’s General Secretary and Bengal in-charge Sunil Bansal who had been conducting independent surveys on behalf of the party in Bengal for the last three months. According to the report submitted by Bansal to the Central BJP, the BJP lacked organisational strength in at least a dozen organisational districts of the party and also this survey revealed the declining popularity of the party in the state. Bansal’s report also suggested that the BJP in Bengal did not have booth presence in a large number of districts and that the support for the party and the cadres of the party at the booth level has been on the decline since the 2021 Assembly polls in the state. This report also said that the state leadership was not able to do enough to resurrect the party in the state.
Apart from this, Bansal has also apprised the top BJP leadership of the “never ending” factionalism within the Bengal BJP and that several senior leaders of the BJP’s Bengal unit are unwilling to cooperate with each other and work in one voice.
Contrast this with the reports that have been shared by the Bengal unit of the BJP with BJP’s high command. The Bengal unit of the BJP’s report says that the BJP has no booth presence in almost all the booths across West Bengal and that the organisation of the BJP has been growing since the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Some Bengal leaders have also rubbished the reports of infighting and said that “all is well” within the Bengal BJP.
According to sources within the BJP, Bansal’s report has been taken seriously by the BJP leadership in Delhi and on the instructions of Amit Shah, BJP national President J.P. Nadda had called a meeting on Monday with all the elected MPs of the party at the BJP national headquarters in Bengal along with its senior organisational leaders like Amitava Chakraborty and national state in-charges of the party.
In the meeting, MPs were asked to explain to the party about the decline of the BJP in their respective constituencies. Apart from this the MPs were also given the task to take care of the Panchayat elections in their respective constituencies. MPs have also been given the responsibility to win a handful of Zila Parishads and Panchayats in their respective areas.
According to sources present in the meeting, the MPs and the other elected representatives of the BJP, including the MLAs have been asked to increase their presence on the ground and to hold sabhas every week in their respective constituencies and to increase the grassroots workers.
Sources from the meeting also told this correspondent that some of the MPs have also complained about the non-cooperative attitude of some of the leaders in the organisational posts within the BJP in Bengal.
According to one BJP leader present in the meeting, a series of heated arguments took place within the meeting with J.P. Nadda having to switch off the microphones of some of the MPs as the sound was reaching to places where it should not be.
“Some MPs like Locket Chatterjee, Saumitra Khan and Shantanu Thakur complained about Amitava Chakraborty and how he was blocking MPs from working in their respective constituencies. They have also apprised the party about Bengal leaders not taking the MPs into confidence before taking any decisions for the party, especially when it came to their constituencies. Some have also demanded that Chakraborty and his coterie be removed for the smooth functioning and the growth of the BJP in Bengal,” a source present in the meeting told The Sunday Guardian.