The BJP’s prahasan divas or farcical day programme that the party had billed as a response to Trinamul’s Martyr’s Day event on July 21 didn’t produce any major surprise as the day ended with a regular news conference and a few social media posts against Mamata Banerjee.

The lacklustre show prompted sources within the BJP to ask whether enough planning was done before announcing their response to the Martyrs’ Day.

“Our party workers were asked to observe prahasan divas through the social media,” said Sayantan Basu, one of the general secretaries of the party when asked what the party did on July 21.

Some insiders in the party, however, said that a few social media posts meant little on a day Mamata Banerjee’s virtual address reached the most distant corners of the state.

“There was no plan on how to make the prahasan divas event a success. Even if the social distancing protocol was an issue, we could have held small meetings at the booth and mandal levels... Trinamul organised booth-level viewing of the speech of the chief minister across the state,” said a BJP insider requesting anonymity.

This person reminded that even in the pandemic situation, the BJP had conducted meetings and Tuesday shouldn’t have been any different.
“We are replying too much on news conferences,” said the leader referring to the three press conferences that the party’s state president Dilip Ghosh, MP Saumitra Khan and national secretary Rahul Sinha held in a span of two hours.

Dilip Ghosh, the president of the BJP’s state unit, took a dig at Mamata’s forecast that her party would observe a bigger Martyr’s Day next year after emerging victorious in the Assembly polls. “We are coming to power... But we will surely allow her to hold a rally on July 21 next year. But she must know that the rally would be reduced to a street corner event,” said Ghosh.

Sinha compared Tuesday’s event with the virtual rally addressed by Union home minister Amit Shah on June 9 and said Mamata’s address didn’t attract “even one fifth of the viewership”.

The other opposition parties in the state followed the ritual of Mamata bashing after her virtual address, in which she hardly spoke about any party other than the BJP.

Left legislative party leader Sujan Chakraborty accused Mamata of spreading misinformation. “The people of Bengal have caught her lies and hence will not come to her rallies anymore. She has been saved by the pandemic,” Chakraborty said.