Bengal BJP Needs Urgent Fixes, Countdown To 2026 Election Begins

The assembly election in Bengal is due in a little over a year. But the principal opposition party — the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) — appears to be in disarray.

The saffron party in Bengal is not only rudderless, but also suffers from internal dissensions. And its workers — the ones that have not abandoned the party — are despairing and disillusioned. 

Given the current state of affairs in the state unit of the party, it will come as no surprise if the Trinamool Congress gets an easy walkover in the assembly election coming up in April-May 2026. 

While the top leaders of the party’s state unit are perceived to be largely ineffective and involved in perpetual internal power struggles and ego battles, the party’s cadres feel alienated and demoralised. 

The BJP's Bengal unit also suffers from a negative public perception. Its dismal performance in the 2021 assembly election, followed by the more disappointing results of the 2024 Lok Sabha election, where its tally came down by a third (from 18 out of 42 seats in Bengal in 2019 to 12 last year), has dented its image as a strong opposition party. 

Also, the strange reluctance of the party leadership to take urgent remedial action has led to a widespread public perception that the BJP central leadership has given up on Bengal. If this perception persists, the BJP will see its 2021 assembly tally fall drastically to maybe a little over a dozen seats. 

What Ails the BJP in Bengal

Power struggles: It is common knowledge that the top leaders of the state unit of the party do not see eye to eye and are involved in frequent power squabbles and ego battles.

Suvendu Adhikari, present state party chief Sukanta Majumdar, his predecessor Dilip Ghosh, and a few other top leaders of the BJP in Bengal are at daggers drawn most of the time.

A BJP member of the legislative assembly (MLA) from Dakshin Dinajpur district, who is also a party old-timer, told Swarajya that Ghosh is in a perpetual sulk after being removed from power.

His intemperate remarks and conduct, and his propensity to put his foot in his mouth, has embarrassed the party many times, according to a former state secretary of the party.

But, despite repeated urgings, Ghosh is said to be loath to learn from his mistakes and be circumspect in his actions and utterances. That, and his frequently irascible behaviour that has alienated many party colleagues and workers, as well as a few other shortcomings, has resulted in his being sidelined.

Adhikari, though the most active on the ground, is said to be unhappy at not being projected as the potential ‘CM face’ of the party, said a BJP MLA from Malda district who is known to be close to him. 

Being an import from the Trinamool Congress, he is looked upon with considerable suspicion by many old-timers in the party, including a number of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) seniors.

Adhikari played a central role in engineering defections from the Trinamool Congress before the 2021 assembly election.

But, said a senior RSS leader of Bengal who often writes in Swastika (the RSS mouthpiece), the fact that most of the defectors ditched the BJP and returned to the Trinamool after the saffron party posted a bleak performance in the assembly election is the reason Adhikari is blamed for bringing in ‘Trojan horses’ into the party. 

Party old-timers, as well as RSS leaders, told Swarajya that Adhikari’s suspected involvement in the Saradha chit fund scam — suspicions persist despite his denials — goes against him. 

“Suvendu Adhikari’s way of functioning and many of his actions and words are alien to the culture and philosophy of our (Sangh) parivar,” said an RSS state functionary.

Majumdar, the former BJP state general secretary said, is seen as lacking in charisma and is ineffective as a leader. “He (Majumdar) does not have the requisite oratorical and leadership skills that are required for being a state party president,” the RSS functionary added. 

The jockeying for power among these three leaders of the BJP in Bengal, among others, and their encouragement of sycophancy have led to intense factionalism.

“This factionalism has done great damage to the BJP in Bengal. And a lot of party workers and second-rung leaders with the requisite talent, skills, and resolve have been ignored and sidelined because they do not belong to any factions.

"Even effective leaders with excellent organisational skills who have worked hard to build the party from the grassroots in many areas have been completely sidelined,” a vice-president of the state party unit confided to Swarajya.

All this has left many committed party old-timers disillusioned, and they have distanced themselves from the party.

Alienated workers: A vast majority of workers and grassroots functionaries of the BJP in Bengal feel that the state party leaders are busy advancing their own interests and do not take care of the workers. 

They point to the abandonment of party workers immediately after the 2021 assembly election, when they came under intense attacks from Trinamool goons. 

“Many party workers were killed, hundreds suffered grievous injuries, thousands had to flee from their homes that were looted and ransacked, and many even had to leave Bengal. But a very few of the (BJP) candidates that they worked for cared to look after them. The workers were largely left to face the attacks by Trinamool goons on their own.

"Most state BJP leaders failed to arrange for their medical treatment or provide them shelter and financial help, and did not help them fight the legal battles arising out of the false cases lodged against them by the Trinamool and the pliant state police,” the RSS office-bearer, who has been a vocal critic of the BJP’s Bengal unit and had vehemently opposed the entry of a large number of Trinamool leaders and workers into the BJP four years ago, told Swarajya. 

As a result, tens of thousands of party workers left the party and many joined the Trinamool to save their lives, limbs, properties, and families. 

Even the ones who remained in the party despite tremendous odds, braving the attacks of Trinamool cadres and state persecution, have not been taken care of properly. Their common complaint is they are used by the party leaders during elections and programmes but forgotten after that.

Comparisons are often made with the way the Trinamool Congress and the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPI(M), take care of their workers. 

A former BJP office-bearer, who was in charge of the campaign machinery of a party candidate in an assembly seat in North 24 Parganas district on the immediate outskirts of Kolkata, told Swarajya:

“Naddaji (BJP national president) came to Kolkata in early May 2021 to meet family members of party workers killed by Trinamool cadres. All he offered were empty condolences and weak criticism of Mamata Banerjee.

"He said that the BJP would use constitutional means to tackle the Trinamool. What would Mamata Banerjee have done in Nadda’s place? Would she have spoken so meekly? She would have launched fierce agitations and been on the streets to bring entire Bengal to a halt. That is what leadership is about.”

A BJP worker from Birbhum told Swarajya that he was forced to flee his home, which was looted and ransacked by Trinamool goons the day the results (of the 2021 assembly election) were announced. 

“But despite desperate pleas, none of the party leaders helped me. I had to take refuge at a relative’s house in Howrah, where I remained for a few months before buying peace with the Trinamool. I did not receive a single rupee for my medical treatment and for rebuilding my house from the party (the BJP) I had worked so hard for. But after I joined the Trinamool, I got a good sum of money.

"Recently, some BJP functionaries approached me to rejoin the party. But why should I join a party whose leaders roam around in big vehicles with a lot of security and do not care for the workers?” said Sunil Mondal, the former BJP worker.

Mondal’s plight reflects that of tens of thousands of BJP workers in Bengal. Most have little respect, leave alone affection, for the party leaders. 

The senior RSS leader said that at present, most of the workers in the BJP Bengal unit are there for their own selfish reasons and have little commitment to the party’s ideology or interests. 

That is understandable: a party that doesn’t look after its cadres will never get committed cadres who will be with the party through thick and thin.

Weak organisational base: After thousands of workers left the party in droves in 2021, the squabbling leadership of the party made, at best, feeble and half-hearted attempts to enrol new members. 

However, with the party leadership’s indefensible failure to stand by its workers who have been facing attacks from Trinamool cadres, the Bengal BJP’s bid to strengthen itself by enrolling members at the grassroots level has been largely unsuccessful.

“A very few of the grassroots workers who left the BJP are willing to return to the party. Especially because they know that the leaders who are pursuing their own selfish interests will never protect them. For them to return to the party, the BJP in Bengal has to drastically change itself,” a functionary of the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) who worked actively for some BJP candidates in North Kolkata in the 2021 assembly election told Swarajya.  

It must be mentioned here that organisational strength — a good presence of grassroots workers to man polling booths to resist widespread rigging by ruling party cadres with help from a pliant state apparatus — is crucial to winning elections in Bengal.

The BJP does not have committed and courageous workers in a large majority of the polling booths in Bengal. That’s why the party cannot ensure that its supporters and voters can reach polling booths to cast their votes during elections. And that’s why the BJP fails miserably to resist rigging by Trinamool cadres.

“Ensuring that voters can reach the polling booths unhindered, and preventing rigging by ruling party cadres, is a prime requisite for winning elections in Bengal. And that can only happen if a party has a very strong organisational base at the grassroots level. The BJP fails disastrously on this count,” said a former state vice-president of the party. 

Failure to mobilise people: The BJP has failed, and with despairing regularity, to mobilise public opinion against the many scams and misdeeds of the Trinamool Congress and the Bengal government that it helms.

Despite the chit fund scams, the teacher recruitment scam, the cattle smuggling and illegal coal mining scams, the ration scam, and the many other exposes of Trinamool functionaries and ministers siphoning off funds meant for welfare schemes and projects, the BJP has failed to lead sustained agitations against these scams. 

The BJP even failed to capitalise on the RG Kar rape-murder case. The horrific rape and murder of a young doctor and the efforts thereafter by senior doctors close to the Trinamool and the police to hush up the case by destroying evidence and misleading investigators, generated intense and widespread public anger.

“But our party (the BJP) could not mobilise this anger and build up a strong movement against the Mamata Banerjee government. The Left actually pipped the BJP on this issue,” said the former vice-president of the BJP state unit.

The widespread public perception, acknowledged a senior RSS functionary who spoke to Swarajya, was that the BJP was simply not interested, or lacked fire in its belly, in leading the movement against the Trinamool government and, specifically, against Mamata Banerjee, who, as health minister, bore primary responsibility for the RG Kar incident. 

Even when the BJP did spearhead protests against the Trinamool over scams, it has always, and inexplicably, failed to sustain them. “There have been many issues which the BJP initially highlighted but failed to follow through. This exposes the lack of commitment on the part of many leaders of the party in Bengal,” the RSS functionary said.

A senior functionary of the state unit of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) told Swarajya that the state BJP leadership’s failure to provide leadership to public protests against the Trinamool government on many issues is disheartening.

“We highlighted the cause of state government employees seeking enhanced DA (dearness allowance) and initially provided a lot of support to their movement. But that support fizzled out, and we went back on our pledge to them (the agitating employees) to stand by them. How will people trust us if we do this?” he wondered. 

The BJP leaders’ failure — and some party insiders even term it a “strange reluctance” — to take on the Trinamool has left not only BJP functionaries and workers but also those of the party’s affiliate bodies like the ABVP disheartened and disillusioned. 

“Bengal BJP leaders should recall how Mamata Banerjee used to attack and lead movements against the CPI(M) at every available opportunity. That’s how she unseated the CPI(M) from power. If the BJP wants to come to power, it should do exactly that,” the RSS functionary said.

Absence of a coherent strategy to take on Trinamool: The BJP in Bengal has failed to craft a coherent strategy that will set it out as a serious contender for power in the state with a clear agenda for governance and a clear vision for reviving the state.

The BJP’s current strategy is centred around an anti-Trinamool agenda. But that is clearly not good enough. For the BJP to position itself as a prime contender for power in Bengal, it has to lay out a clear vision and strategy for Bengal’s revival.

“The BJP has to offer a vision to the people of Bengal. It has to spell out how it will revive Bengal’s economy and turn the state around. It has to spell out and then actively highlight its agenda for governance. Simply opposing the Trinamool will not do,” a former vice-president of the state unit of the party, who has retired from active politics due to old age, told Swarajya.

“The BJP also has to prove to the people of the state that it is a party vastly different from the Trinamool Congress. It has to show that it is distinct from the Trinamool Congress,” he said. 

Unfortunately, said the RSS functionary, with all the infighting, power struggles, ego battles, and allegations of graft against some BJP leaders, the saffron party is seen by many in Bengal as a greyer version of the Trinamool Congress.

The Task Before the BJP

To put itself back in the reckoning in Bengal, the BJP has to overhaul its state unit and initiate a number of drastic measures, said the BJP, RSS, VHP, and ABVP functionaries who spoke to Swarajya. A number of brave but brutal measures need to be taken by the party’s central leadership.

Apart from strictly and sternly disciplining the state unit, the BJP central leadership also needs to nurture a new set of leaders who are committed to the party’s ideology, incorruptible, hardworking, fearless, and have a deep empathy for the party’s grassroots workers, said the RSS leaders. 

“The drastic measures that need to be taken will trigger painful convulsions within the BJP’s Bengal unit. But such measures are necessary if the BJP is to project itself as a serious contender for power next year,” a senior VHP leader told Swarajya.

Not doing anything immediately means conceding the election next year to the Trinamool Congress.