Union home minister Amit Shah asked 18 BJP MPs from Bengal to take charge of one Lok Sabha seat each in addition to their own constituencies to bolster its organisation ahead of the Bengal Assembly polls.
“Amitji is giving a lot of responsibility to the elected MPs and at times more than the state unit leaders,” a senior BJP leader said.
“He has asked all party MPs to visit all Assembly segments in their constituencies.... Besides, sitting MPs will take charge of at least an additional Lok Sabha seat where we had lost in 2019. He wants the MPs to take the responsibility of expanding the organisation in the state,” the source added.
This instruction was passed on Friday when Shah met the MPs and the MLAs of his party along with other state committee members.
Shah has set a target of at least 200 seats for the BJP in the upcoming Assembly polls and predicted a victory with a two-thirds majority.
Though the Union home minister sounded bullish about the party's prospects in the state, Shah was apparently not happy with the organisational strength of the party.
A source said that the extra responsibility to the MPs was an indication of his dissatisfaction with the existing state of the party’s organisation.
That the central leadership acknowledges the lack of organisation in Bengal was explicitly stated by the party’s national general secretary B.L. Santosh, who was in Calcutta with Shah.
Sources said that during a closed-door meeting on Friday, Santosh said that the BJP doesn’t have the election machinery, which once belonged to the CPM and is now under Trinamul’s control, that is a prerequisite to win elections in Bengal. “Santoshji said we need people, who can play a role in winning elections for us...,” a source at the meeting told this paper.
A sense of urgency was visible in 6 Muralidhar Sen Lane, the party’s state headquarters, on Saturday. The party’s state president Dilip Ghosh, national vice-president Mukul Roy, party’s minder and co-minder for Bengal Kailash Vijayvargiya and Arvind Menon, and national joint general secretary (organisation) Shivprakash met representatives from all the Morchas.
“We will set up committees in all booths with 50 member each by the end of November,” Ghosh said.
“We are a bit weak in minority dominated areas, but everything will be done,” Ghosh added at a news conference.
It was decided in this meeting that the party’s state youth wing will invite PM Narendra Modi to address a public meeting in January next year. The event will mark the birth anniversaries of Swami Vivekananda and Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, which are on January 12 and January 23 respectively.
“We have decided that there will be several programmes marking these two events. Modiji’s programme is being planned sometime between January 20 and 23. ” said the wing’s vice-president Shankudeb Panda.
Another programme to be initiated by the youth wing is to incorporate 11 youth in every booth committee of the state. “The programme is called ‘one booth 11 youth’ and this will strengthen our party’s booth level structures,” Panda added.
