Bengal BJP’s Kharagpur Sadar MLA Hiranmoy Chatterjee on Tuesday quit all official WhatsApp groups of the party and lashed out at the state unit leaders for excluding him from organisational matters, at a time the saffron party in the state is beset with such protests.
“Our former state president (Dilip Ghosh), who is now a national vice-president finds me of no use. They call meetings only when I am not present in Kharagpur. When I call them to attend my meetings, they don’t turn up either. So, what is the point of me being on WhatsApp groups,” Chatterjee said on Wednesday.
Though the actor-turned-politician’s criticism was levelled at BJP’s Midnapore MP Dilip Ghosh, the MLA said that he was not blaming anyone in particular. “I have a problem with the entire state leadership. The BJP has two identities. One is the central leadership, which is very fond of me. The other one is the state leadership which doesn’t like me at all,” Chatterjee told The Telegraph.
“I spoke to the leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari about this, but he said he can’t interfere in organisational issues,” Chatterjee, who defected to the BJP from Trinamul ahead of the Assembly polls, said, adding that “in the last 11 months” he was ignored on multiple occasions.
An unperturbed Ghosh said: “I attend meetings my party asks me to. Same goes for him (Chatterjee). I’ve been elected by the public. So is he. We should focus on working for the public. The party will decide the rest.”
The BJP’s Bongaon MP and chief of the Matua sect, Shantanu Thakur, who on Monday quit all official BJP WhatsApp groups, called a private meeting on Tuesday evening that three Matua MLAs close to Thakur attended.
On Wednesday, the new chief of the party’s Bongaon organisational district, Rampada Das, went to meet Thakur at his residence. Thakur refused to meet Das, but met Tapas Mitra, chief of the party’s Barasat organisational district.
Thakur has been visibly angry over the lack of Matua representation in the party’s newly formed state unit.
Ranaghat South MLA Mukutmani Adhikari said: “I have apprised the BJP leadership that the sentiment of the Matua community members has been hurt. We have placed a strong demand for organisational posts in the BJP in the state, district as well as in the zonal level. We have not set any timeline. We have left it to the discretion of the state committee.”
Meanwhile, a group of BJP old-timers dropped from the state committee met at the residence of former state vice-president Joy Prakash Majumdar. Another BJP veteran leader Pratap Banerjee, also a former state vice-president, was present. Several others attended the meeting virtually.
“We met to discuss the future of our party. Whoever is currently at the helm of the state unit’s affairs is suffering from a lack of experience. But people like us have been in politics for 30-35 years,” said Joy Prakash Majumdar who also met Hiranmoy Chatterjee on Wednesday.
Additional reporting by Subhasish Chaudhuri
