The central leadership of the BJP has asked five leaders from Bengal to campaign against the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the Delhi Assembly polls scheduled for February 5.

Sources said the decision to field the five Bengal leaders in the campaign against the AAP was aimed at wooing Bengali voters. Delhi is home to approximately 4 lakh Bengali voters who are concentrated in areas like Chittaranjan Park, Mahavir Enclave, Nivedita Enclave and Tagore Garden.

However, Bengalis are one of the most underrepresented groups in the Delhi Assembly.

Bengal BJP president and Union minister of state for education Sukanta Majumdar, Darjeeling MP Raju Bista, Bishnupur MP Soumitra Khan and Ranaghat MP Jagannath Sarkar were asked to campaign in Delhi. The sources said the leader of the Opposition in the Bengal Assembly, Suvendu Adhikari, was also called to Delhi to join the election.

“I, along with some other prominent leaders from the state, have been asked to take part in the campaign (in Delhi). Although details of the campaign strategy are yet to be discussed, we will mainly concentrate in the Bengali-dominated areas of Delhi,” said Jagannath Sarkar who is likely to go to Delhi in a couple of days.

Pradip Ganguly, the general secretary of Delhi’s Bengal Association, one of the oldest organisations of the community in the city, said: “Around half of Delhi’s Bengali population resides in and around the Chittaranjan Park area, while the rest are spread across the city. Bengalis have a rich history and cultural legacy in Delhi with the community tracing its roots in the national capital back to 1850. Still, the community lacks representation in the Assembly and the local civic bodies, leaving their concerns unaddressed and overlooked.”

The sources said to address the problems of the Bengalis in Delhi, the BJP had already deputed “vistaraks (expanders)” to those areas for a focused outreach among the community members.

“There will be several vistaraks assigned to handle a particular area. Each vistarak will have a dedicated team of party workers under him who will interact with the voters and explain to them the works done for the community by the Narendra Modi government and the failures of the AAP in its 10-year-rule,” a senior BJP leader said.

Trinamool Congress chairperson and Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee had already announced support for the AAP and its leader Arvind Kejriwal.

“What else could she do but support Kejriwal? She has no presence in Delhi, so she’s trying to latch onto Kejriwal to establish a foothold there. Her main goal is to oppose the BJP government and that will be emphasised in our campaign,” Sarkar said.

Although the Bengal BJP leaders were told that the campaign should not be limited to regional issues as national matters needed to be focussed in Delhi, one party office-bearer said Mamata’s alleged misrule in Bengal would also be highlighted in the campaign.