By Tirthankar Mitra
KOLKATA: West Bengal unit of BJP seems to have developed a penchant of shooting itself on the foot. This time it is Balurghat MP and Union minister of state for education Sukanta Majumdar who is holding the smoking gun after he has urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to make north Bengal a part of North East.
Majumdar also happens to be the state BJP chief although an outgoing one. This is not the first time when a senior BJP leader has sought a second dismemberment of Bengal. Way back in 2021, Alipurduar BJP MP John Barla said that a separate state or Union Territory be carved out of West Bengal.
Recently BJP Rajya Sabha MP Ananta Maharaj has sought creation of a separate state/ Union Territory of Coochbehar. A verbal commitment has been given and creation of s separate territory is a matter of time, he claimed.
Barla’s proposal, it may be recalled sank without a trace. In fact, Union home minister Amit Shah ruled it out outright.
But after Majumdar voiced his separate statehood demand, he found it to be backed up by Ananta Maharaj who happens to be a leader of Greater Coochbehar People’s Movement. But Union home minister, Shah’s and Prime Minister Modi’s silence on the proposal speak volumes about its acceptability.
For what is apparent to the saffron camp’s most dependable poll campaigners remains unseen to Majumdar and Maharaj. Or it may very well be so that the duo has an axe to grind.
Having reaped rich electoral dividends nationwide after extolling the virtues of a BJP regime, the Modi-Shah juggernaut stuttered to a halt in West Bengal. Time and again, Trinamool Congress, the ruling dispensation of the state have stood up to the saffron onslaught and got the better of it.
The BJP fared better electorally in North Bengal but not sans unleashing a few bogies before the voters. One of these scares is facing a situation in which infiltrators from Bangladesh will make the settlers from erstwhile East Pakistan a minority in their homeland..
Majumdar has underscored in his proposal that north Bengal has many similarities with the North East. In his haste to grab the headlines, the state BJP chief has overlooked that unwittingly he has made many a north Bengal resident recollect the horrors of the partition.
It struck neither the Balurghat MP nor the Rajya Sabha member Maharaj that they are pushing their voters into the Trinamool camp. Even if they are staunch BJP loyalists, they will start having second thoughts.
The Trinamool Congress leaders including Rajya Sabha member Sukhendu Sekhar Roy have lost no time in pointing out that the BJP leaders are allegedly preaching secessionism. It is a serious and lasting allegation in a state once seared by Partition and its fallout.
The tally of saffron camp MPs from West Bengal has dropped from 18 to 12 in 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Obviously it is not a pointer to the rise in the party’s popularity in the ballot box.
Charges of muscle flexing by TMC backed goons won’t wash in the backdrop of vigil by central forces during elections. The fact remains that BJP leaders were nowhere to be seen beside their party activists when their supporters homes were vandalised allegedly by TMC-backed goons post 2019 Lok Sabha and 2021 Assembly elections.
The untoward incidents did not give north Bengal a go by. Small wonder, the sudden overflow of concern for the people north Bengal evokes suspicion about the motives of some of the BJP leaders.
It may very well be a ploy to divert attention from the poll debacle in a state where Prime Minister Modi had predicted his party will come up with its best ever performance in the polls. As the state unit chief, Majumdar cannot escape his share of blame: Perhaps raising the separate statehood demand is his game plan of passing the buck. (IPA Service)
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