Top Bengal BJP leaders on Monday spent more than half the day at various temples in the state promoting an event featuring Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Varanasi with some sections in the party commenting that they could have better devoted the time to the campaign for Calcutta Municipal Corporation polls.

Multiple BJP candidates said on condition of anonymity that they “wished” their leaders had set their priority right and spent time campaigning for the CMC polls rather than propagating the party’s Hindutva agenda with an eye on the ensuing Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls.

“After the party lost the Assembly polls in Bengal, leaders in Delhi are making us feel like stepchildren. What else could be the point of forcing state leaders to spend hours at temples when they should actually be campaigning with us?” a BJP candidate asked. The leader said it appeared that the BJP was so desperate to win the UP polls that it was ready to forsake the Calcutta civic polls.

“We understand that it is important for the party to sweep UP. That doesn’t mean the CMC polls aren’t important. We are putting up a fight against the Trinamul Congress’s atrocities. The least the party can do is stand by us,” the candidate added.

At a recent virtual meeting of Bengal BJP, senior leaders such as state general secretary (organisation) Amitava Chakraborty had informed his colleagues about Delhi’s diktat. He sad all prominent BJP leaders would have to be present at local temples on December 13, which was Monday, as Modi inaugurated the newly constructed Vishwanath Corridor in Varanasi.

While the diktat applied for all BJP state units, several Bengal leaders questioned its need when the beleaguered party faced the civic polls in the city. However, they were told that the “order is from the highest levels” of the party and had to be followed word by word.

State BJP chief Sukanta Majumdar, his predecessor and national vice-president Dilip Ghosh and the party’s Nandigram MLA Suvendu Adhikari — the three key leaders of the party in Bengal — were present at the Tarakeshwar temple in Hooghly, the Bhootnath temple in Calcutta and the 108 Shiv temples in Burdwan, respectively, on Monday.

Although both Majumdar and Adhikari reached Calcutta by evening and all the three participated in the CMC poll campaign, a section in the BJP couldn’t help but regret that the larger part of the day had been “wasted”.

“As it is, Sukantada and Dilipda were largely unavailable for the campaign because they were in Parliament. But when both of them were in Bengal on Monday, shouldn’t they have been seeking votes for us?” another candidate asked.

“This event (at Varanasi) marked the unshackling of a thousand years of suppression. This is why it was important to celebrate it nationally. The campaign and this are two different issues,” said Bengal BJP’s chief spokesperson Samik Bhattacharya.