A door-to-door campaign planned by Jayanta Roy, the BJP MP of Jalpaiguri, in some localities of Siliguri on the Citizenship (Amendment) Act did not evoke the kind of response the party was expecting, said a senior BJP leader while voicing the concern about the political impact of the new act on the party’s poll prospects in Bengal, especially in the north.

“Roy visited some wards which are under the Siliguri Municipal Corporation but are under Jalpaiguri district, but the response was at best lukewarm… He had to even cancel a Chai Pe Charcha, an interaction planned by party at a marketplace, as local people didn’t turn up to hear him,” said the source.

In the morning, the MP reached a local market near New Jalpaiguri station and from there, he moved to Surya Sen Colony and then to Lake Town. During his campaign, Roy approached people, handed them leaflets containing details of the CAA and spoke to them.

Some of the people whom Roy met said they greeted him out of courtesy.

“As he is our MP, I showed him courtesy and listened to him for a couple of minutes and accepted the leaflet from him. I need not know more about the CAA as I have already seen details of the act on social media,” said a shop owner at NJP.

The MP moved with a group of 20-odd party supporters. However, he was disappointed on reaching a school ground at Surya Sen Colony where a Chai Pe Charcha had been arranged by the party.

“We had informed our supporters and people in general of the locality that the MP will be here and that he will interact with them on the CAA and some other issues over a cup of tea. It is surprising that the residents did not turn up. We have to check out what went wrong,” said a BJP insider.

As the event flopped in the absence of audience, Roy sat there for couple of minutes with party supporters, had a cup of tea and left.

From there, he went to Lake Town, met some shop owners and ended his programme. He was supposed to visit Gate Bazaar, a prominent marketplace nearby, but did not go there and left for the local BJP office.

Roy, on being asked about the campaign, said: “We wanted to clear the misconception from people’s minds on the CAA. We wanted to assure them that the act would help in conferring citizenship to people and would not take it away from them.”

In the evening, it was learnt he has visited some more places, but the response was hardly encouraging for the BJP, still smarting under the face loss of Raiganj MP and Union minister of state Debasree Chaudhuri, who had to beat a hasty retreat from Indira Colony in Raiganj town in the face of a volley of questions from local people when she went there to campaign for the CAA.

Earlier, when Darjeeling MP Raju Bista had campaigned in Siliguri and in the suburbs, people had greeted him but had remained silent and did not provide any feedback on whether they support the CAA or are against it.