Perform Or Perish: BJP Central Leadership Hands List Of Tasks To Bengal Unit

The Bengal unit of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is poised for a massive rejig at the district and mandal (equivalent to a tehsil or sub-district) levels.

The party’s central leadership has told state leaders that office-bearers from the district level downwards who have not been performing and have failed to meet specific targets need to be replaced.

BJP national president J P Nadda and Union Home Minister Amit Shah have been holding a series of meetings with senior party leaders from Bengal over the past few days to discuss organisational matters.

The BJP central leadership is learnt to be displeased with the party unit in Bengal. Shah has chided the Bengal leaders for failing to enthuse workers at the grassroots level and launching effective campaigns to counter the Trinamool. 

The Bengal BJP has come in for flak for not being able to highlight the scams and widespread corruption of the Trinamool regime in the state.

The state unit has also failed to educate the masses in Bengal about the many welfare schemes launched by the Union government and the strides made in social welfare and physical infrastructure in BJP-ruled states. 

“The performance of the state unit has been lacklustre. Despite massive corruption that exists in Bengal, we have not been able to highlight and leverage it properly. We have allowed the Trinamool to get away with the falsehood that the Union government is not releasing funds for development and welfare schemes to Bengal. We have failed to add momentum to the latent anti-incumbency against the corrupt Trinamool regime in the state,” a senior national leader of the party told Swarajya. 

Another issue that bedevils the state unit of the party is infighting and factionalism. This inflighting peaked after Dilip Ghosh was replaced by Sukanta Majumdar as the state party chief in September 2021 after the debacle in the assembly polls. 

But removing Ghosh and making him a national vice president of the party only intensified factionalism in the party’s ranks in Bengal. 

That is reportedly why he was dropped from the post of national vice president recently. And by doing so, the BJP central leadership has demonstrated its firm intent to root out factionalism, say state party leaders. 

“The message has gone out loud and clear that factionalism and infighting will not be tolerated. Everyone will have to work together by settling personal differences or keeping them aside. The goal is to ensure a good performance in next year’s Lok Sabha polls,” said a senior state office-bearer.

The central leadership is worried that the drift in the state unit will severely affect the party’s performance in Bengal in the parliamentary elections next year. 

That is why state party chief Sukanta Majumdar and leader of opposition Suvendu Adhikari have been expressly told to work in sync and design a sharp Bengal-specific strategy for next year’s Lok Sabha polls. 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other top leaders of the party met BJP MPs from Bengal, apart from Odisha and Jharkhand, in New Delhi on Monday (31 July). Nadda, Shah and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh were present at the meeting. 

What is pertinent is that Modi told party MPs from Bengal to design the party’s Lok Sabha campaign for the state around local issues for maximum traction.

“The Prime Minister was very clear that national issues like abrogation of Article 370 or the construction of the Ram Mandir at Ayodhya would not find much resonance among Bengal’s electorate. So there is no point in highlighting those issues. Instead, smart and sharp campaigns highlighting local and state-specific issues have to be designed,” a BJP MP from North Bengal who attended the meeting at the Parliament Annexe Building told Swarajya. 

A series of follow-up meetings have been scheduled with Bengal MPs in groups and even individually as well as top office-bearers and prominent MLAs of the party. 

Nadda, Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh and some senior Union ministers will meet the party’s elected representatives (MPs and MLAs in groups and even individually) over the next few weeks to discuss state organisational matters with them. 

“We will come up with a very sharp campaign highlighting Trinamool’s many failings and misdeeds, including massive and unprecedented corruption, its disastrous policy of appeasement of minorities and its abject neglect of North Bengal, Jangalmahal and some other parts of the state in close consultation and under the guidance of our central leaders,” Suvendu Adhikari told Swarajya. 

The Bengal BJP leaders have been asked to specifically counter the Trinamool’s campaign that the Union government is depriving Bengal of its dues. 

“The state unit has been asked to counter this false campaign with facts and figures. It has been advised to turn the Trinamool’s campaign on its head by highlighting the fact that massive corruption in implementation of centrally-sponsored schemes in Bengal and the state’s refusal to take action against the guilty and adhere to norms has led to non-disbursal of funds. It should be easy to tell people of Bengal that they are suffering and not getting their dues because the Trinamool has looted the money that was meant for them,” said a national secretary of the party. 

State BJP president Sukanta Majumdar told Swarajya: “The Prime Minister has made invaluable suggestions and we will follow them to the hilt. The Union government has also done a lot of work in Bengal, especially in developing physical infrastructure, and we shall highlight that as well in our campaign”. 

Along with designing an effective campaign, state BJP leaders have also been asked to strengthen the party organisation at the grassroots level. 

The state leaders have been asked to reach out to grassroots workers and enthuse them. They have been told to identify dedicated and honest workers with good organisational skills and give them organisational responsibilities. 

Non-performers will also be identified and replaced. A complete overhaul of the party organisation from the district level downwards is on the cards.