New Delhi: From discussing with BJP MPs in West Bengal about the political situation in the state to seeking feedback on what the party needs to do, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is walking the extra mile to shape the saffron campaign for the next year’s assembly polls there.
Modi has held one-on-one meeting with most of the BJP MPs from the Trinamool Congress (TMC)-ruled state during the ongoing Budget Session in which he also sought feedback on popular views about his government’s schemes. It definitely is a signal about the massive importance he attaches to the Assembly polls due in the state in April-May in 2021.
A marginal player in West Bengal till the party stunned Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee-led TMC by bagging 18 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats in 2019, the BJP hopes to capture power on the back of Hindu consolidation over her government’s alleged pro-minority bias and lack of development.
“Modi ji has decided to meet every MP from West Bengal. He asked them about a number of political and development issues. It boosted their morale and energised them for the political battle ahead,” West Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh said.
Locket Chatterjee, who along with Ghosh is the most vocal party MP from West Bengal in Lok Sabha, said Modi enquired about what needed to be done to win the Assembly polls and what is the popular view about the central government and its schemes.
In the 2016 West Bengal Assembly polls, the TMC had won 211 seats in the 295-member assembly, followed by over 70 of the Left and the Congress, which had a seat-sharing arrangement, and merely three of the BJP. The Assembly also has one Anglo-Indian member. Then BJP’s vote share was barely above 10 per cent against over 45 per cent of the TMC.
However, political landscape of the eastern state has since changed radically with the Left and the Congress seeing a meltdown in their support base and the saffron imprint growing exponentially.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP won a little more than 40 per cent of votes compared to over 44 per cent of votes of the TMC. The saffron party believes that it can upstage the TMC in West Bengal by mounting an aggressive campaign on the twin-planks of Hindutva and development.
The party is likely to stick to its pro-Citizenship (Amendment) Act stand as a large number of its targeted beneficiaries are Bangla-speaking Hindus but may play down its earlier call for a National Register of Citizens (NRC) in the state, sources said.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah, whose aggressive campaign pitch in West Bengal during the Lok Sabha polls when he was the BJP president was considered key to the party’s success, is likely to remain strongly involved with its Assembly campaign, sources said.
Ghosh said Shah has assured the state party organisation that he would be visiting there three times on an average every month after April.
PTI