With triple talaq on its mind and the cow in its heart, the BJP has set its sights on West Bengal. After an impressive electoral victory in Uttar Pradesh, the party has started planning its moves to conquer the eastern state, which would soon have three successive polls—the panchayat elections in 2018, the Lok Sabha elections in 2019 and the assembly elections in 2021.
“The central leadership has taken the decision to reach all workers of the poll-bound states across India [Karnataka, Gujarat, Bengal, etc],” BJP national secretary Rahul Sinha told THE WEEK. “The MPs, ministers and senior leaders would reach out to workers and tell them about the party’s policies and programmes. They would listen to their problems and would report to party president [Amit Shah].”
The team in West Bengal, led by Home Minister Rajnath Singh, would include leaders such as Urban Development Minister Venkaiah Naidu, Water Resources Minister Uma Bharti, Textiles Minister Smriti Irani, Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar, Minister of State for Finance Arjun Meghwal and others from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.
Forty MPs, including the ministers, would visit Bengal in small batches, starting April 13, and would stay there for more than a fortnight to assess the party’s position in the state. They would travel across the state and talk to BJP members at the block level and ask them to rebuild the party. The MPs would report to BJP president Amit Shah in Delhi, who would spend a week in Bengal later in the year.
The BJP outlined its Bengal mission days after the Calcutta High Court ordered the CBI to take over the investigation of the Narada sting operation, on March 17, in which several Trinamool Congress leaders were seen accepting bribes. The BJP’s plan, said insiders, is to strengthen its presence in the state so that it would be able to reap the benefits when the state government reels under the Narada case.
“Let them send 400 instead of 40, we would be untouched,” said Partha Chatterjee, Trinamool Congress secretary general. His statement, however, seemed like false bravado, as Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, at a core-committee meeting at her house on April 1, had told her leaders: “Be prepared for the impending war. Of course, we would try to expand outside Bengal. But, we would have to get our act together in Bengal.”
According to party insiders, the BJP’s main target would be to reset the party for the panchayat elections. About 29 per cent of the state’s population is Muslim (about 3.2 crore), and the BJP has decided to play up the triple talaq issue to garner support in the community, especially among women. It is also in talks with several influential Muslim clerics in the state.
“We are sure that not only women, but also liberal men of the Muslim community would support our campaign against verbal talaq,” said Biswapriya Roy Chowdhury, state BJP general secretary. “We received huge support from the Muslim women in Uttar Pradesh and we are sure we will get the same in Bengal. It’s a curse that has to be abolished. In fact, I am in talks with a couple of liberal Muslim leaders in Kolkata and its outskirts, and they have decided to support us.”
BJP state secretary Somnath Banerjee, who met several Muslim leaders in Burdwan, said: “I had an interaction with clerics who told me the community faces a huge crisis as most of them are agrarian. The state government is unable to solve their problems. The women want rights, and the youth want jobs; both are missing in West Bengal. So, we are getting their support.”
Sources in the BJP told THE WEEK that its senior leaders would tell party workers about the effects of demonetisation and other measures of the Narendra Modi government. “They would also be told to circulate the achievements of the BJP government and [talk about] how the West Bengal government is taking credit for many social schemes being run by Central funds,” said a state BJP vice president.
Banerjee said senior leaders would personally camp in the districts, talk to local leaders and appraise leaders who were given posts in or after 2014.
Apparently, about 5,000 BJP members, who had joined the party through its ‘give a missed call’ initiative, have been found to be sitting idle. Some of them have even been attending functions organised by the Trinamool Congress. The central leadership has decided to take strict action against them.
Moreover, certain high-profile members such as singers Bappi Lahiri, Kumar Sanu and Arati Mukherjee, and talk show host and quiz master Barry O’Brien, are expected to be relieved of their responsibilities.
“What can we do? We have repeatedly asked them to come to party programmes and do their duties,” Roy Chowdhury told THE WEEK. “Some of them were made spokespersons to air the party’s views at different forums. They did not do that, but were ready to take advantage of being party leaders. They were often seen in the corridors of power in Delhi. So, we decided to remove them.”
The “idle” members did not respond to THE WEEK, but one singer, on the condition of anonymity, said: “I was not given any responsibility. The party did not take up any programme.” Sources in the BJP said that the roles of senior leaders would also be assessed.
“We would have to make a grand plan to get a good number of seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections,” said a senior BJP leader. “Only then would we know whether we can uproot the Trinamool Congress in 2021.”
The BJP would also raise one of its pet topics, cow slaughter, but it would focus on the economic aspects while seeking a ban on the practice. “We are not going into the religious link the cow has had,” said Roy Chowdhury. “We will tell people that the cow is the most economically viable animal in our country; every part of it is precious. If a cow is alive, the farmers would benefit. They can use its milk, dung, urine, etc. Why should they kill it then?”
The party would also campaign to make farming mandatory in agricultural land, with special focus on bullock carts. “Tractor farming could be done in big fields, which are hardly there in West Bengal,” said Roy Chowdhury. “So, it is better to use cows or bulls than a tractor, which is expensive.”
Planning ahead: Amit Shah with Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh in Kolkata | Salil Bera
But, how would the demand for a ban on cow slaughter help the BJP while wooing Muslims? “Why not? We are not giving it a religious tone,” he said. “If it worked in Uttar Pradesh, then why not in West Bengal?”
The BJP has also started looking for good candidates for the panchayat and Lok Sabha elections. Apparently, hundreds of members of the Trinamool and Left parties, said Roy Chowdhury, are expected to join the BJP. “You would be surprised to know that many Trinamool legislators are in touch with us,” he said. “They would join us at the appropriate moment. We are waiting for the right time to axe the ruling party.”
Told about the BJP’s plan, Trinamool MP Sultan Ahmed said: “The BJP is being pushed by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Under Modi, the RSS is drawing a blueprint to bring the BJP back to Bengal. But, they would not succeed.”
He said the accusation that Mamata was trying to pass off Central policies as her own was false. “We have implemented whatever the Central government wanted us to implement,” he said. “In fact, we did more than what the BJP-ruled states did. I don’t know why the accusation has been levelled against us.”
For all its plans, it would take some time for the BJP to win a state that had been ruled by the communists for more than three decades. Bengal has a different culture and a varied population, which includes Muslims, Hindus, tribals, refugees and people from the hills.
“For the lotus to bloom, the BJP needs charismatic leaders who are accepted all over the state,” said Amiyo Samanta, a political science professor in Kolkata. “It also needs programmes that would improve the lives of the cross-section of society and an agenda of governance for the economic development of the state. Bengalis love charisma, which is not easy to find. [After all] Modi cannot be the chief minister of West Bengal.”
