Kolkata: Aiming to strengthen the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) organisation, Union Home Minister Amit Shah will be on a two-day visit to West Bengal from April 14 and hold a public meeting in Birbhum district. The Home Minister will also hold closed-door organisational meetings with the state leadership.
“Amit Shah will be on a two-day visit to West Bengal from April 14. He is scheduled to hold a public meeting in Birbhum. He will also take stock of the organisational situation and hold meetings with the state leadership. On April 15, he will visit Dakshineswar Temple and offer Puja on the occasion of Bengali New Year,” a state BJP leader said.
Shah visit part of BJP’s ‘Pravas’ campaign
In preparation for the panchayat election, Shah will visit Bengal at a time when the party is attempting to bolster its organisational infrastructure. Shah’s programme in Bengal is part of BJP’s ‘Pravas’ campaign to strengthen its organisation in 144 Lok Sabha seats in the country that it had lost by slender margins in the 2019 general election.
The party had won 18 of the total Lok Sabha 42 seats in Bengal then. The BJP leader said that Shah and BJP national president J P Nadda are slated to address 12 rallies each, covering 24 Lok Sabha seats in the state that the party had lost in the election that year.
TMC on Amit Shah visit
However, the ruling Trinamool Congress is not giving much importance to Shah’s visit. “As the rural poll in West Bengal is approaching, BJP leaders will come to the state more frequently. But it will not yield any result,” TMC speokesperson Kumal Ghosh said. “We have seen how BJP’s central leaders had camped in West Bengal before the 2021 assembly polls. But the party faced defeat. The state BJP is now trying to vitiate the atmosphere of the state,” he added.
BJP has been plagued by internal squabbles and defections after the 2021 assembly election. Former union minister Babul Supriyo, party MP Arjun Singh and six legislators, including national vice-president Mukul Roy, have switched to TMC since the poll. TMC steamrolled to power for the third consecutive term in the state in 2021 by winning 215 of the 292 seats to which polling was held, while the BJP bagged 77.
Nadda has already addressed two rallies in West Bengal as part of the Pravas campaign in January and February. Birbhum, where Shah is slated to hold a public meeting, is considered to be a stronghold of the ruling TMC. But political equations in the south Bengal district have changed in the last few months after CBI arrested Trinamool Congress district president Anubrata Mondal in the cattle smuggling case.
(With PTI inputs)
