Much time and effort have been spent to try and spot the predecessors of the BJP in any role in the freedom struggle.

Less ambitious attempts have been made during the Amphan storm aftermath and the pandemic crisis to catch the BJP’s present-day flag-bearers among the volunteers helping common citizens, but not with much success.

The winds of change, so to speak, are now flirting with the BJP because of Yaas, a cyclone named by Oman and set to hit the eastern coast this week.

Bengal BJP chief Dilip Ghosh on Sunday instructed the party to stand by the potential victims of Yaas.

“We have asked our workers to stay alert at all places. Camps have already been set up in the districts for workers who have been victims of the post-election-result violence. Our leaders have been directed to stand by the common people along with the workers if the cyclone strikes,” said Ghosh.

The instruction intrigued several party leaders because it is the first time in recent memory that the state unit president has issued such a directive.

“We have never been in the field handling such situations.… About a year ago, Amphan had hit Bengal. We organised protests against irregularities in distribution of relief, but we don’t have the experience of helping people in distress,” said a BJP insider.

Few BJP leaders will concede it on record but the party had been in full electoral battle mode long before Amphan struck and its single-minded goal was to the conquer the last frontier of Bengal. The primary objective of keeping Bengal on the boil and poaching on rivals had overshadowed the pressing needs of the people.

A civic worker trims the branches of a tree in Calcutta on Sunday as a safeguard against it getting uprooted if the city feels the impact of Cyclone Yaas on Wednesday.  The cyclone’s trajectory on Sunday suggested it might make landfall between Balasore  in Odisha and Digha in Bengal on Wednesday, a Met official said. Calcutta is around  170km from Digha and 250km from Balasore. Cyclone Amphan last year had made  landfall 100km from Calcutta. Even if Yaas makes landfall between Balasore and Digha,  it is expected to unleash high-speed winds and heavy rainfall in Calcutta on Wednesday, officials said. Gautam Bose

Even after the election debacle, the BJP has largely remained in campaign mode — a trait the Bengal leadership may have borrowed from the playbook of Narendra Modi.

A BJP leader in Bengal added that even during the pandemic, the party had hardly done anything substantial to help the poor.

Which stood out because the BJP has enormous resources at its command and its ideological parent is credited with running a well-oiled social service machine.

In contrast, the Opposition parties, with far less money at their disposal, stood by and helped the needy, not just in Bengal but elsewhere in the country too.

Among the Opposition parties, the CPM deployed the Red Volunteers — members of the party’s youth and student wings — to help people in distress. Unlike the BJP, which bagged 77 seats in the Assembly polls, the Left could not win a single seat but the Red Volunteers have not ceased their work.

The Congress, in spite of its poor electoral fortunes, has been at the forefront of the relief effort in northern India, so much so that the Modi government has been accused of sending police to intimidate the party’s youth wing in Delhi.

Numerous civil society groups have also stepped up to help desperate citizens searching for hospital beds and oxygen.

Finding itself on the back foot during the Covid second wave, the BJP national leadership is keen that its ranks are visible in humanitarian efforts. It is not known if Ghosh’s directive on the cyclone is linked to this line of thought.

“If someone asks what we have done during the pandemic for people, we don’t have any answer other than claiming that we were victims of post-poll violence,” a BJP youth wing leader in Bengal said.

According to the youth wing leader, only recently did party MPs Debasree Chowdhury and Sukanta Majumdar launch two mobile oxygen vans for their Lok Sabha constituencies. Similarly, a food-for-all centre was started under Ghosh’s instruction in Midnapore last week.

“The fact remains that we were so busy trying to come to power that we forgot the people.... Now, some efforts may have begun,” a party insider said.

But another leader said he would like to wait and watch as state party chief Ghosh’s instruction on the approaching cyclone has not yet been followed up with any actionable plan.

According to sources, although the saffron leadership had nationally launched the Seva hi Sangathan or Service is Organisation drive in 2020 to reach out to people affected by the lockdown, the party’s Bengal unit had little to contribute. Some tarpaulins were distributed in the areas affected by Amphan, but the number was nothing compared to what the situation demanded.

Parliamentarians who were tasked to help people during the pandemic would complain that the state police came in the way of their efforts by asking them to abide by the lockdown protocols. The police, however, said their objection was to the BJP MPs travelling with large entourages and thus violating the Covid-19 protocols.

“Why were the MPs travelling with so many people? If they actually wanted to help, they could’ve travelled with small numbers of people and reached out to the needy,” the BJP youth wing leader said, adding that the MPs had used the police orders as an excuse not to work.