IN THE FIRST WEEK of March, Prime Minister Narendra Modi began meeting all 18 BJP Lok Sabha members from West Bengal, one on one. “He has tasked all of us with certain jobs,” said an MP who met Modi. “He said he would personally monitor us and will come to Bengal quite often after June.”
Apparently, Modi wanted to know the progress of Central projects in their constituencies, and about the situation in the state after the violence related to the Citizenship (Amendment) Act. “He asked me to report to him directly on the progress and also on any project facing logjam or being held back due to lack of initiative by the state government,” said Maldaha (Uttar) MP Khagen Murmu.
The BJP’s state unit has said that Modi himself would be the face for the 2021 assembly elections, due in April. “Preparation has begun for his tour across the state later this month,” said a senior national leader who is co-in-charge of West Bengal. “He would tell people what Bengal has missed in the past five years during Mamata’s (Banerjee) rule.”
This is a sharp deviation from the BJP’s usual plan for state elections—having Home Minister Amit Shah as the face of the campaign. In Bengal, Modi would be at the top, and under his guidance, Shah would spend at least three days each fortnight, to begin with, and then three days per week in the state. The party has rented a big apartment for Shah in Kolkata’s New Town.
Said BJP state vice president Biswapriya Roychowdhury: “Yes, Amit ji would give a lot of time to Bengal. Like our state in-charge and co-in-charge have their accommodation in the state, Amit ji would also get his new address in Kolkata to monitor the campaign and organisation.”
The party’s plans aside, there is now increased focus on Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar, who met Shah at his Delhi office on March 6. Sources told THE WEEK that Shah wanted to look into the overall law and order situation in Bengal and how “politicised” the state administration had become. Apparently, Dhankhar’s appointment last year was to tackle this alleged politicisation.
Since taking over as governor, Dhankhar has regularly called senior state officials to Raj Bhavan to teach them “impartiality”. He has held back important bills and refused to sign critical orders as the chief secretary and director general of police refused to meet him, allegedly at the instance of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. When the officials finally started meeting him, Dhankhar asked them to focus on governance rather than “appeasing” the ruling party and government.
The governor, said sources, met the home minister to tell him how the state administration had played a negative role during the anti-CAA violence, and in particular the part top officials had played in it.
Dhankhar reportedly gave Shah a bunch of recommendations, but refused to reveal any. He stressed how Bengal was the only state that had spent “crores of rupees” on advertisements against the CAA, and how he, the governor, was attacked in educational institutes, leading to a “collapse of law and order in the state”.
It is not clear whether Dhankhar and Shah discussed the issue of invoking Article 355 of the Constitution, which deals with Central involvement to protect states, but after the meeting, Dhankhar said there was “internal disturbance” in Bengal and indicated the possibility of Central interference.
Article 355 reads: “The duty of the Union government is to protect states against external aggression and internal disturbance and to ensure that the government of every state is carried on in accordance of with the provisions of this Constitution.”
BJP leaders admitted that Modi and Shah would not like a repeat of what had happened before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections—several leaders, including Shah and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, were barred from holding rallies across the state.
“If the state government tries [this] during the next assembly elections, the Union government would step in immediately,” said a senior state BJP leader.
Political observers see Dhankhar’s meeting with Shah as part of a larger strategy. On March 12, the governor sent a letter to the state election commissioner, asking him to seek Central forces, apart from the state police, for the upcoming elections to 107 municipalities and the Kolkata Municipal Corporation. In the letter, Dhankhar cites a constitutional provision that allows state election commissions to ask for additional forces to ensure peaceful elections.
Interestingly, no opposition party has demanded additional forces in the state.
Dhankhar also asked the commission to “dispel fears” that it was an extension of the state government, signalling that the office of the governor would be a crucial factor in the run-up to the assembly elections.
At the party level, the BJP has been working on a massive organisational revamp to check the moves of Trinamool Congress’s strategist Prashant Kishor, said Roychowdhury. “We are sure that the face of the prime minister is far more accepted in Bengal than what Kishor does for the TMC,” he said.
As part of the revamp, he said, there would be extra co-in-charges for the state elections. Currently, four senior national leaders are the state in-charges. While Shah’s key man Arvind Menon will look after North Bengal, Shiv Prakash, the joint general secretary (organisation), will work in the Chotanagpur region. General secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya will look after Kolkata and the two 24 Parganas districts, while MP Suresh Pujari will continue working in the Junglemahal area.
“In the run-up to the elections, more national leaders would be made in-charges of different regions,” said Roychowdhury. “Under each co-in-charge, there would be one or two senior leaders.”
All state in-charges would report to party president J.P. Nadda and general secretary (organisation) B.L. Santosh, who has begun visiting Bengal and is holding closed-door meetings with state leaders. He would play a key role in establishing links between the BJP, the RSS and affiliated workers’ organisations.
While Modi would get constant reports from Shah and Nadda, he would also be in touch with all the MPs, along with two key personalities—state BJP president Dilip Ghosh and election committee convener Mukul Roy.
“We know civic body elections will be carried out by the state election commission and will be supervised by the state government,” said Roychowdhury, “but despite that we are taking the elections seriously.”