BJP president J.P. Nadda is set to kick-start the party’s Lok Sabha campaign in Bengal on Thursday with a visit to the Iskcon temple in Nadia district, followed by a rally at Krishnagar.
Fresh in his second term at the helm, Nadda will visit the Iskcon temple in Mayapur and later address a public rally at Bethuadahari in Krishnagar. Mayapur and Krishnagar are in Nadia district.
Sources in the Bengal unit of the BJP said both Nadda and Union home minister Amit Shah would visit Hindu temples during their frequent visits to the state planned over the next year.
“The biggest (Hindu) temple in the world is coming up at the Iskcon headquarters in Mayapur. (Our) national president J.P. Nadda will visit the place and speak to the sages there,” state BJP general-secretary Jagannath Chattopadhyay told a news conference in Calcutta on Wednesday.
“Before leaving for the public rally, he will have prasad at Iskcon,” he added.
Nadda’s visit is part of the BJP’s plan to strengthen its poll prospects in 24 Lok Sabha seats it had lost in Bengal in 2019. While Nadda will visit 12 constituencies, Shah will address rallies in the other 12.
Krishnagar is a constituency with around 46 per cent Muslims and in some of the Assembly segments, such as Nakashipara, Chapra and Kaliganj, the community forms over 60 per cent of the electorate.
In 2019, the BJP lost Krishnagar to the Trinamul Congress by more than 63,000 votes. Of the seven Assembly seats, six were won by Trinamul in 2021.
According to the BJP, a focused campaign to unite the Hindu electorate in this constituency might help the party’s electoral cause ahead of panchayat polls due this year and during the 2024 general election.
However, in the recently-concluded national executive of the party, Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked his party to reach out to Muslims who are backward and poor. The rally in Krishnagar will also focus on that, sources in the state BJP said.
“We have been told to penetrate the Muslim-dominated zones with a stress on Trinamul’s corruptions in the PMAY and the MGNREGA schemes, which victimised lakhs of poor and deserving people cutting across communities,” said a BJP leader in Chapra, which played a key role in ensuring Trinamul’s victory in 2019.
“If we fail in that, consolidating the Hindu votes is the only option left,” he added.
Arjun Biswas, the party’s Nadia North unit chief, said a crowd of 30,000 people was targeted for Thursday’s rally.
“All these people will be brought from the Krishnagar constituency itself,” he said.
The BJP has already hired multiple buses and sent them across the Lok Sabha area for workers to pour in on Thursday. After the meeting, Nadda will sit with the office-bearers of the Nadia North organisational district of the BJP and take a stock of the organisation.
