Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari is fast realising that a BJP turnaround in two Trinamul Lok Sabha seats he is most interested in — Calcutta South, Mamata Banerjee’s former constituency now held by Mala Roy, and Diamond Harbour, Abhishek Banerjee’s current constituency — is easier said than done.
Adhikari volunteered to handle organisational responsibilities for the two seats before the 2024 general election.
“Publicly, he is very bullish about uprooting Trinamul from those two seats. However he has seen the barely-there (BJP) party organisation in both, in the last few meetings, and is worried,” said a source close to him.
The organisational distribution of 42 Lok Sabha seats of Bengal among senior BJP leaders happened around May 10. Since then, Adhikari has met the workers of Calcutta South at least twice. Each time, he has stressed the need to strengthen the organisation at the grassroots.
However, according to the BJP's liberal estimates, not more than 50 per cent of the 2,000-odd booths here have a proper party organisation.
Meanwhile, sources in the Diamond Harbour organisational district said that Adhikari had rebuked the local leadership during the district executive meeting on Friday, for not doing enough to give the organisation a boost.
"Suvenduda was very angry after he got a clear picture of our organisation here. He rebuked us. He promised to come to Diamond Harbour whenever we call him but said it won't be enough to win this seat," a source said.
This BJP source said that work has to start from scratch in most of the 1,700-odd booths in Diamond Harbour.
The BJP needs only 11 people to establish one booth committee. While both these seats have a little over 17 lakh electors each, the saffron camp is finding it difficult to convince people to man the booths for them.
After the 2021 Assembly polls, the BJP blamed the alleged violence by Trinamul cadres for its weakening organisation in Bengal. However, according to the recent admission of BJP leaders themselves, such incidents have come down exponentially in both these seats.
“We cannot put the blame on Trinamul anymore. In Calcutta South, the violence was never out of control. While it was torturous in Diamond Harbour, even that has come down. It is our fault that we still don’t have a strong organisation in these two crucial seats,” a source said. He claimed that apart from Falta, Budge Budge and parts of Bishnupur, BJP cadres face no problem in the rest of Diamond Harbour.
Union home minister Amit Shah has set a target of 35 seats for the Bengal BJP in the next general polls and expects Adhikari to play an important role in achieving this result. This is why Adhikari has been tasked with the two most prestigious seats in the state, sources said.
“It now appears Suvenduda has a lot at stake. His proximity with Amitji grew after he defeated Mamata in the Assembly polls (from Nandigram). But if he fails to repeat the miracle (for the BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls) in Calcutta South and Diamond Harbour, or at least in one of them, he may fall from grace,” a state BJP functionary said.
Explaining Adhikari’s desperation, this person said he (Adhikari) has even spoken about meeting the Muslim population in Calcutta South, if need be, risking his newfound image of Hindutva poster boy, in order to woo them to vote for the BJP.
Sanghamitra Chowdhury, the BJP chief of Calcutta South, said an event to facilitate a meeting between the Leader of the Opposition and the Muslims of this seat is being planned. She refused to give details on organisational issues.
Calls from this newspaper to Abhijit Sardar, Sanghamitra's counterpart in Diamond Harbour went unanswered.
