The Bengal BJP has been assigned the embarrassing task of organising an event in which it will not be able to participate since the party has not won a single zilla parishad in the recent rural polls.

On August 12 and 13, a conference of all BJP heads of zilla parishads in eastern India will be held in Bengal.

Representatives from Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura, Assam, Mizoram, and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands will take part in the event that will be organised at a hotel in Kolaghat, East Midnapore.

While the Bengal unit of the BJP has been tasked with organising the conference, there will be no participant from the state in the event. The conference is likely to be attended by BJP’s national president J.P. Nadda and general secretary (organisation) B.L. Santhosh. Prime Minister Narendra Modi might address the session virtually.

“At least 134 zilla parishad chiefs and deputy chiefs will participate in the conference. It is embarrassing that the event is organised in our state by our organisation and yet none of the participants will be from Bengal,” a source said.

“Yes, our state leaders like Sukanta Majumdar and Suvendu Adhikari will be present at the conference. But their presence will only be ex-officio,” the leader added.

The leader said as “compensation” for the 31 people who won from various zilla parishad seats in the recent rural polls in Bengal, the state unit was planning to organise a conference exclusively for them on August 14.

Similar conferences are being hosted across the country. A conference of the BJP's zilla parishad chiefs from western India will be organised in Gujarat sometime next week. It will be followed by an event in Haryana.

However, unlike Bengal, every other host state unit will have its own participants. The embarrassment that Bengal BJP workers suffer assumes significance in the light of the fact that before the polls, leaders like Majumdar and Adhikari had made tall claims of winning multiple zilla parishads in north Bengal and Jungle Mahal.

However, nothing of the sort happened.

The polls were conducted in 20 zilla parishads of Bengal on July 8 and the Trinamul Congress bagged all of them. Out of a total of 928 seats in the 20 zilla parishads, only 31 were won by the BJP.

Bengal BJP leaders have publicly held the violence preceding the polling and rampant rigging unleashed allegedly by Trinamul responsible for the saffron camp's poor performance. However, several sources in the BJP have said in private that the weak organisation of the party is also to blame.

Although the BJP won over 11,000 seats in the three-tier panchayat system, which was much better compared to the 2018 results, the vote share suffered a slide. While the BJP had secured around 38 per cent votes in the 2021 Assembly elections, it bagged only 23 per cent votes in the 22 districts that went to the polls in 2023.

No Bengal BJP functionary was ready to speak about the conference. However, Subrata Chakraborty, the chief spokesperson for the BJP’s Tripura unit, confirmed that such an event was in the pipeline.

“At least 13 leaders from our state will be present at the Bengal event. The conference will help zilla parishad chiefs and their deputies plan the way forward while sticking to the basics of the BJP,” he said.