BENGAL BJP LEADERS FLOUNDERING AFTER SUCCESSIVE DEFEATS

BJP insiders blame the lack of cohesion, bad blood and even infighting and sabotage for the repeated failures of the party in Bengal.

- SUPROTIM MUKHERJEE

Despite Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah making repeated visits to Bengal to help the BJP gain electoral traction, internal issues of the state unit are making such efforts go waste.

The problem runs deep for the state BJP: the 2021 Assembly polls, the 2023 Panchayat polls and the 2024 Lok Sabha polls have highlighted the repeated failures of the state leadership to get its act together.

The most recent setback has been the by-elections to four Assembly seats, all of which the Trinamool Congress won handsomely even though three of the seats had been with the BJP while one had given the Trinamool Congress a slender lead.

Even in the just-concluded Lok Sabha elections, the BJP got very comfortable leads from all the three Assembly segments, and also fared quite well in the fourth. That’s why the BJP’s stunning defeats in all these four seats is not only humiliating for the party, but also signals that the party has gone into a decline in Bengal.

Observers feel that unless the Central leadership takes immediate remedial steps, the going will get worse for the party since the Assembly elections will be held in 2026.

Swarajya, the right-wing publication headed by wellknown BJP supporters, wrote recently: “The performance of the BJP candidates in the bypolls should serve as an urgent wake-up call for the central leadership which can only put off the urgently required drastic overhaul of the Bengal unit at the party’s own peril. If nothing is done and drift allowed to continue, the BJP central leadership may well resign itself to the saffron party becoming a marginal and even inconsequential political force in Bengal very soon.”