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What the change of guard in Bengal means for BJP

BJP had made a 41-year-old academic as party's state chief

BJP's new national vice president DIlip Ghosh (L) and new West Bengal state president Sukanta Majumdar  | Salil Bera BJP's new national vice president DIlip Ghosh (L) and new West Bengal state president Sukanta Majumdar | Salil Bera

The change of guard in West Bengal BJP has raised eyebrows of many political observers as the saffron party for the first time has made a 41-year-old academic, having an RSS background, as the state party chief.  

Sukanta Majumdar, a professor of Botany in North Bengal University, is a close confidante of former BJP state president Dilip Ghosh, and the youngest state president of the party. Ghosh’s tenure was supposed to end in February next year. But the BJP’s parliamentary board cut it short by five months and made Majumdar, an MP from Balurghat of North Bengal’s South Dinajpur, as the state president.

BJP insiders said that Ghosh himself proposed Majumdar’s name as his successor to party’s national president J.P. Nadda who had sought many names from Ghosh. The RSS had spoken to party's general secretary (organisation) Amitava Chakraborty and sought his opinion. The list had also included Locket Chatterjee, Anirban Ganguly, Sayantan Basu and Swapan Dasgupta. The party wanted to field someone who could be acceptable for urbanites of Kolkata and adjoining North and South 24 Parganas. But interestingly, the party accepted the proposal of Ghosh in order to show respect to his contribution. Some wanted Suvendu Adhikari for the top job. But Adhikari, as he has been given the important job of the leader of the opposition, was ruled out by the top leadership as they wanted him to concentrate on the task in assembly.

“What the party in Bengal today is simply because of Dilip Ghosh. He built the party from scratch. He is the Bengal BJP’s first mass leader,” said a national secretary of the BJP. 

But even if Ghosh is “extremely popular” in rural Bengal—from North to South and East to West—his acceptance in urban areas of Kolkata is almost zero due to his public outburst against the elites in the city. 

Even though he is not a Kolkata boy, Majumdar, being an academic, might be acceptable to the high society of Kolkata. Cool, clam suave and gentle, Majumdar, who could also speak in English, is diametrically on the opposite side of Ghosh. Taking charge from Ghosh on September 21, he asked those who left the BJP recently fearing the TMC torture to make a comeback. Ghosh, on the other hand, had dared them not to make any attempt to come back to BJP when BJP’s “good days will again come”. 

And on the very next day, on September 22, Majumdar led a team of BJP workers to campaign at Harish Chatterjee street of Kolkata’s Bhawanipur where Mamata Banerjee’s residence is located. 

While Ghosh has been assigned the job of national vice president in Delhi, he would most likely take that job lightly and would independently work as a leader of Bengal.

Majumdar is likely to rebuild the organisation of the party in the state and it is expected that many new faces would be taken into the party’s secretariat replacing the old ones. Arjun Singh, the MP from Barackpore, is likely to get more prominence in the party. So will be a few MPs and MLAs like Jagannath Sarkar, Bankim Ghosh and Shankar Ghosh. The last two came from CPI(M). 

The appointment of Majumdar was carefully done because the central leadership wanted to give some respect to people who defected from other parties to BJP, which Ghosh had always opposed. Ghosh used to call them weather cock and often insulted them saying they came to BJP in order to get good lives. A senior leader said Ghosh's extremely bad relation with Babul Supriyo was well known and the central leadership and the RSS were forced to accept Babul’s “incapacity” after being deliberated upon by Ghosh. Even though Suvendu Adhikari did not say anything publicly, sources said he had also reported the apathy of Ghosh towards those who came from other parties.

Central BJP thinks that in the present scenario Majumdar and Adhikari would again create a new spell of wave for the BJP in Bengal, as both of them took the same line of organising movement. Ghosh on the other hand used to do in Ekla Cholo style by going alone in the past. 

What would be in store for Ghosh? Party’s central leadership sources said he would be an asset for the party and having a close confidante of RSS chief Mohan Bhagawat he would find his larger role in the central BJP leadership. Question is, would he accept that or, as he always said, would he like to go with 'Bengal first' policy?

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