Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, and BJP President Nitin Nabin are among the party’s star campaigners for the upcoming West Bengal Assembly elections.
The BJP submitted the list of star campaigners to Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar amid intense preparations for the high-stakes electoral battle.
The list also includes Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Union Ministers Nitin Gadkari, J.P. Nadda, Dharmendra Pradhan, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.
Elections to the 294-member assembly will be held in two phases on April 23 and 29, with vote counting scheduled for May 4.
Having increased its seat tally to 77 in the 2021 assembly elections, the BJP aims to wrest power from the Trinamool Congress, even as early opinion polls and surveys indicate a slight edge for Mamata Banerjee’s party.
Relying on the “Modi wave”, the BJP has opted not to project a chief ministerial face during the campaign. State BJP president Samik Bhattacharya told PTI on Sunday, “The BJP does not project anyone as the chief ministerial candidate. In Delhi and Haryana, who did the BJP project as the face? We did not. Yet we won. The same happened in Odisha. We did not fight those elections with any single face.”
The party’s campaign has primarily focused on alleged demographic changes and law-and-order issues. Speaking at a rally in Cooch Behar on Sunday, Modi cited the gherao of judicial officers in Malda, alleging that the incident reflected the TMC’s “sponsored maha jungleraj.”
He said, “What happened in Malda was not merely the arrogance of the TMC. It was the sponsored maha jungleraj of this cruel government. Whenever the noose of justice tightens around the TMC, it tries to strangle constitutional institutions.”
