The Bengal BJP on Saturday announced an extensive organisational reshuffle across districts in the run-up to civic elections early next year after its grand plans for the state were left in tatters by successive setbacks at the hustings this year, but ended up raising the hackles of several elected representatives and leaders.

The BJP has replaced the presidents of 30-odd organisational districts, bifurcated organisational districts and brought several RSS pracharaks to the forefront in the districts.

The changes, following a recent restructuring of the state committee and the frontal organisations, came within two days of the state election commission informing Calcutta High Court that polls to 112 civic bodies would be held in two phases next year — on January 22 and February 27.

“The structural changes are sweeping as the presidents of 30 of the 39 organisational districts have been removed. Most of those replaced in the reshuffle belonged to the Dilip Ghosh camp,” a BJP functionary in Calcutta said. Ghosh is a former Bengal BJP chief.

“The new leadership in the state has also decided to form new organisational districts in Malda, Birbhum and South 24-Parganas,” the source added.

The overhaul, multiple sources said, was necessary in view of the back-to-back poll debacles in Bengal, a state ideologically crucial for the BJP and one where the party needs to make a mark to strengthen its presence in eastern India.

After the drubbing in the Assembly elections and the even poorer show in the bypolls, the BJP suffered a body blow in the recently held Calcutta Municipal Corporation elections, where its vote share was even less than the beleaguered Left.

“It is a challenge for the BJP to prove its strength in the districts. After the Assembly elections, many local leaders and workers who had made a beeline for the party returned to their old camps. The new office-bearers have a lot of responsibilities, including finding good candidates for the upcoming civic polls and also working towards making the organisation stronger,” a party insider said.

He pointed that in regions like north Bengal, where the BJP had won 30 of the 54 Assembly seats, and some parts of south Bengal such as Nadia, North 24-Parganas and Purulia, it was necessary for the party to win municipalities to retain its support base.

“If we fail to take control of the civic bodies, our support base will erode further and the contest will become tougher in the panchayat elections scheduled in 2024. We cannot afford to lose the civic polls in districts such as Cooch Behar, Alipurduar, Darjeeling and South Dinajpur. We hope these organisational changes will help the party. Most of the new district presidents are younger than the earlier office-bearers,” said a BJP leader in Siliguri.

As part of the plan, the BJP has nominated leaders associated with the RSS as the in-charge of several districts. They will work as observers along with the district presidents, the BJP sources said.

“It is evident that the party is trying to piggyback on the RSS’s support base, keeping in mind that many districts and civic areas have a mixed population. Also, hardly any of these leaders have been deputed in his their own districts,” a political observer said.

Apart from the change in district presidents, the heads of the five zones in Bengal have also been replaced. Sayantan Basu, who was the zone head in north Bengal, has been removed and Locket Chatterjee has been drafted in as the party in-charge in Burdwan and Purulia.

A section of BJP MLAs are unhappy with the overhaul.

On Saturday, five BJP MLAs of the Matua community, from Ranaghat South, Haringhata, Gaighata, Bongaon North and Kalyani, quit a social media group of the party’s lawmakers.

The BJP sources said the MLAs were angry with the state leadership over the recent changes and claimed that the Matua community, which is said to have supported the BJP in recent elections, does not have adequate representation in the state committee.

“The number of dissidents seems to be on the rise in the BJP, particularly after these organisational changes. It is yet another issue that the party will have to handle ahead of the civic polls,” said an observer.

“It is true that all the MLAs from the Matua community are upset with the recent reshuffle of the state committee. It is quite surprising that the section of voters who played the key role in the success of the party in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and also won a good number of seats for the party in the Assembly polls, has no representative in the new committee. This has obviously irked our MLAs, who vented their grievance to me and also quit the party’s WhatsApp group”, said BJP MP Santanu Thakur, the head of the All India Matua Mahasangha.

“It is unfortunate that although most of the MLAs have been accommodated in the committee, all the Matua MLAs have been ignored. They were not even accommodated in the district committees”, he added.

“I met (BJP president) J.P. Naddaji over the issue and appraised him about the grievance of the MLAs. I am hoping he would offer a suitable solution. I have, however, not spoken to the state president on the issue since all the changes were made by the central leadership,” Thakur told The Telegraph.

The MLAs who quit the party’s WhatsApp group are Mukutmani Adhikary, Ambika Roy, Subrata Thakur, Ashim Sarkar and Ashok Kirtania.

Additional reporting by Subhasish Chaudhuri