By Tirthankar Mitra
At a time when BJP national leadership wants to pull out all stops to ensure that saffron juggernaut rolls all over the West Bengal in next year’s election, it finds organisational glitches hamstringing its programme with less than ten months to go before the crucial Lok Sabha polls. Loose ends so far overlooked threaten to retard the program with the fact of being cut off from the masses looking the state leadership in the face.
An instruction from the national level to the state BJP to hold 1000 meetings in the next four months was not given much importance. But it sat up and took notice post a strong reminder to send a list of the rallies stating the leaders who will address them.
In a knee-jerk reaction, the state BJP leadership is finding itself unequal to the task. Apart from the huge expenditure, the state unit lacks the organisational depth to implement this programme, a state leader admitted on condition of anonymity.
Indeed, holding 1000 meetings in the next four months is a tall order for the state BJP unit. If convening meetings to be addressed by leader of the Opposition, Subhendu Adhikari in the constituencies where BJP candidates had lost in 2021 elections is being deemed to be a face saver, more troubles are round the corner for the state saffron camp.
Ideology of the saffron camp needs to be spread far wider in West Bengal. The realisation came to light in so many words at a training camp of “vistaraks” at Tara Peth organized by by national general secretary(organisation) B L Santosh and state party chief Sukanta Majumdar, recently
The job of the “vistaraks” is to spread the saffron camp ideology and send the feedback to the party a task on which they were on the job in 2021 state Assembly elections. It is not a thankless job as 294 of these grass root activists were assured of senior posts in the party hierarchy after the elections.
If the disastrous election results of BJP in 2021 assembly polls are a pointer to the extent of their success, it has to be admitted on the same breath that it is an uphill task. Long before the BJP or its political predecessor Jan Sangh started functioning in this state, Bengal has witnessed the rise of Congress stalwarts like CR Das, J M Sengupta while post independence state Congress’s affairs were run by Dr BC Roy, Atulya Ghosh and Prafulla Sen, all of whom more or less went by Gandhian thoughts.
Post-1977, successive generations have grown up under Left Front rule and subscribed to its political ideology. Small wonder, the “vistaraks” did not find themselves in a fertile field while spreading saffron camp ideology.
But the promise made to the “vistaraks” of being rewarded with senior posts in the party remains mostly unfulfilled was the unpleasant surprise which confronted state chief, Majumdar at the Tarapeeth camp. It was attended by 24 “vistaraks” and 18 more are needed to cover the 42 Lok Sabha seats in the state.
Though some instances were cited by the leadership showing “vistaraks” being rewarded for their labour, state BJP sources stated that it did not cut much ice. One does not have to read much between the lines to find that BJP’s Hindutva ideology have neither struck roots in the state nor is likely to do so in near future and the blame cannot be laid entirely at the door of the persons asked to spread it.
State BJP leadership sent most “vistaraks” for a toss after declaration of the poll results. One cannot expect the “vistaraks” to be full of beans and raring to go to spread the BJP ideology before 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
Simultaneously, intra-party differences have surfaced again in state BJP with party’s national vice president Dilip Ghosh condemning the strategy of engineering defections in the Trinamool Congress camp to add to the saffron ranks.
Leader of the Opposition, Suvendu Adhikari is one of these deserters and belongs to Ghosh’s opposing faction though the latter did not name him. These defectors have all gone back to TMC and election results indicate that people do not support deserters, Ghosh pointed out questioning the rationale of admitting them to the saffron camp.
It was the ideology of the saffron camp which helped it put the Trinamool Congress on its backfoot in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Ghosh said. The party has to showcase its ideology again for next year’s polls for electoral success, he opined.
Thus state BJP finds itself in a rut before Lok Sabha polls. It will need all the organisational ingenuity of its leadership to emerge out of it and set its house in order. (IPA Service)