The BJP went on an overdrive on Monday over Sunday’s murder of a close aide to the party’s Barrackpore MP Arjun Singh, in an apparent bid by the saffron ecosystem to drown the outrage in Bengal over the Hathras atrocity, but the party’s state unit chief Dilip Ghosh ended up scoring an own goal.
Manish Shukla (not Sukla as reported earlier), the 44-year-old BJP worker previously in the CPM and Trinamul, was gunned down at Titagarh in North 24-Parganas on Sunday evening.
Sources in 6 Muralidhar Sen Lane said the BJP state leadership was quick to sense in the murder a chance to generate noise loud enough to — at least for now — blank the outrage over Hathras in Uttar Pradesh and protests against the farm bills passed by the Narendra Modi government.
“Shukla’s killing gave us a chance to highlight the breakdown in law and order here (in Bengal),” said a BJP leader.
A faux pas by state BJP chief Ghosh momentarily scuttled this narrative. Speaking to journalists, Ghosh alleged lawlessness in Bengal, drawing parallels with two NDA-ruled states, one going to polls in a few days and the other ruled by the saffron camp’s poster boy Yogi Adityanath. “Bengal is slowly going under mafia-raj, just like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh,” he said.
Ghosh’s comment prompted some of his party colleagues to wonder if he ever thinks before speaking in public.
But the BJP’s narrative was aided by governor Jagdeep Dhankhar, who purportedly told a delegation of the BJP and Shukla’s family that he would do his best to ensure the murder is probed by the CBI.
On Monday evening, after the autopsy on Shukla, the BJP leadership wanted to carry the body to Raj Bhavan, but police stopped the procession near the SN Banerjee Road, resulting in a scuffle between the police and the BJP workers, and halting traffic for over an hour-and-a-half. Later, the police top brass allowed four members from the BJP and Shukla’s family to meet Dhankhar.
The BJP’s new national vice-president Mukul Roy — formerly Trinamul’s de facto No. 2 — met Shukla’s family, along with the party’s Bengal minder Kailash Vijayvargiya and co-minder Arvind Menon. Vijayvargiya and Menon also went to the NRS Medical College and Hospital, where the autopsy on Shukla’s body was done. The BJP tried imposing a 12-hour strike in Barrackpore with roadblocks at many key intersections.
In Delhi, BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra said political murders had become the “new normal” in Mamata’s Bengal, and demanded a CBI probe.
However, many in the BJP said Shukla was no martyr and “just another mercenary”. A party insider alleged Shukla extorted money from jute mills, and had “no ideology or loyalty”.
Trinamul leader Firhad Hakim, on his part, suggested Shukla could have been trying to return to the fold.
“Manish was one of my favourites there. Even as recently as the Lok Sabha polls last year, he was a key organiser of our campaign (against Singh). He was coerced into leaving for the BJP and it was well known that he wasn’t happy there. He was looking to come home (to Trinamul)…. That is why this killing is all the more suspicious,” said Firhad Hakim, a Trinamul general-secretary who is part of the apex seven-member steering committee of the party.
Several BJP leaders this newspaper spoke to admitted in private that Mamata’s aggressive Hathras campaign – in tandem with that against the farm bills – had caught the BJP off-guard in Bengal. “His murder did serve on a platter a timely opportunity to point fingers at the law and order situation here and play the victim card,” a BJP insider said, adding that the matter is being raised with the Centre, especially Union home minister Amit Shah.
