The Bengal BJP’s poor performance in the bypolls — the party lost in all six Assembly seats — has become a cause for concern for many party leaders, who fear a slowdown in the party’s ongoing membership drive.

Saturday’s results of the November 13 bypoll have demotivated the larger section of the party’s rank and file, sources said.

A BJP source said that the pace of the membership drive slowed down even more on Saturday after the election results showed the party failed even to retain Madarihat — a seat it had won by significant margins in the 2016 and 2021 Assembly polls and also got a significant lead in this year’s Lok Sabha polls.

With the Trinamool Congress bagging all six Assembly seats, the BJP has also lost its deposit in two minority-dominated constituencies, Haroa and Sitai.

The BJP’s vote share also dropped significantly to 25.48 per cent from 38.73 per cent in the general election held in the summer of this year.

“Such disappointing results always demotivate party workers on the ground, but these setbacks usually last only a few days. However, our crisis is that this short-term demotivation has already slowed down the membership drive in various areas, especially in the districts,” said a BJP leader.

Union home minister Amit Shah had given the Bengal BJP the daunting task of meeting the target of one crore members from the state with a November 30 deadline. There are only six days left to the deadline.

Although the BJP has not officially disclosed its current membership data, a source said it stood at around 17 lakh as of Friday.

“One crore is a distant goal, and senior leaders like state in-charge Sunil Bansal are urging us to meet the target as soon as we can. As the membership drive slows down during the final leg, it is indeed alarming,” said a BJP insider.

Multiple district-level leaders involved in the membership drive admitted that many party supporters had temporarily lost interest in reaching out to people and urging them to join the BJP.

“It is really embarrassing to ask people to become members of the party over the next couple of days after this disheartening result. We know these were bypolls and understand how the TMC conducted the elections, but it’s not easy to explain this to the general public,” said a BJP leader in Dum Dum.

“If we were enrolling an average of 200 BJP members daily until Friday, the number dropped to just 50 on Saturday,” he added.

The membership drive, launched nationally by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on September 2, is set to end on November 30.

In Bengal, however, it was relaunched by Shah on October 27 due to state leaders’ involvement in other pressing matters, including the party’s movement in the August 9 RG Kar brutality. This left the state unit with just over a month to meet the one-crore target.

Extension plea

Given that the November 30 deadline seems insufficient to meet the massive target, state BJP president Sukanta Majumdar formally approached national leaders on Friday, requesting an extension. Majumdar made the request during the ‘Sangathan Parv’ workshop held in Delhi, which was organised to finalise the schedule for internal elections, including those for BJP Mandals and state presidents. A source said that the national leadership has not yet granted the extension.

“Extensions are not granted automatically upon request. The national leaders will make the final decision,” said BJP Rajya Sabha member Samik Bhattacharya, who is in charge of the membership drive in Bengal.

BJP insiders suggested that apart from embarrassment, another reason for the sluggish response from the party’s rank and file is the TMC’s increased muscle-flexing since their landslide victory in all six Assembly seats on Saturday.

“There is already an atmosphere of fear in rural areas due to TMC’s surveillance since the membership drive began. Following the bypoll results, local TMC leaders have been silently threatening potential BJP members. This is not a conducive time for an aggressive membership drive,” said a BJP leader from East Burdwan.

Rajya Sabha member Bhattacharya, who is also the BJP spokesperson, however, claimed that the Saturday’s bypoll results have had no impact on the ongoing membership drive.

“There is no effect of such results on our membership drive,” Bhattacharya said.