FUMBLING AT THE FINISH LINE
Will internal rift and controversial candidate selections upset the BJP applecart in West Bengal?
THE BJP INSISTS THAT ALL ITS CANDIDATES WERE CHOSEN AS PER A ‘WINNABILITY’ SURVEY, BUT PARTY WORKERS SAY THERE HAVE BEEN SEVERAL QUESTIONABLE PICKS
P“Political tourism bahut achha chal raha hai (Political tourism is on in full swing).” This jibe from Union home minister Amit Shah, the BJP’s chief strategist for the West Bengal assembly election, on March 15 was directed at the 25-odd party leaders in charge of organisational work, who have been camping in the state for the past three months to realise Mission ‘Ebar Bangla (Now Bengal)’. Earlier in the day, Shah had to call off his rally in Jhargram district at the eleventh hour as the BJP local unit was able to mobilise only a handful of people to turn up.
Shah’s dressing down for party leaders, though, was prompted by a deeper concern. Campaigning in Guwahati for the Assam election, he decided on a brief stopover in Bengal on the way back to Delhi following reports of intense disgruntlement among party leaders and workers over the selection of candidates. Between March 14 and 16, BJP workers blockaded highways and vandalised party offices in parts of Howrah, Hooghly and South Dinajpur districts. Leaders, including national vice-president Mukul Roy, national joint general secretary (organisation) Shivprakash and Barrackpur MP Arjun Singh, were mobbed at the party headquarters in Kolkata. For the BJP, which claims to have a disciplined cadre and promises to rid Bengal of the ‘cult of political violence’, the incidents were deeply embarrassing.
While in Kolkata for a night, Shah, it is learnt, questioned several decisions taken in the run-up to the Bengal election. He asked BJP national president J.P. Nadda why last October, a relatively inexperienced Amitava Chakravorty had replaced Subrata Chattopadhyay, an experienced RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) hand, as party general secretary (organisation). Chakravorty, an RSS pracharak and former ABVP (Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad) leader, was promoted from the position of joint general secretary (organisation).
THE TUSSLE WITHIN
Chattopadhyay’s removal came as a huge setback for BJP Bengal unit chief Dilip Ghosh. The two had been working closely for the past four years and had contributed immensely to their party’s impressive growth in the state—from 10 per cent votes and three seats in the 2016 assembly election to over 40 per cent votes and 18 seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha poll. Nadda and Kailash Vijayvargiya, the BJP national general secretary and central observer for Bengal, tried to argue in favour of Chakravorty, but Shah was unimpressed. “What will he (Chakravorty) do?” he asked, bluntly. Chattopadhyay’s unceremonious exit had indeed raised eyebrows since he is known for his organisational prowess, having set up 1,200 mandals, 11,000 shakti kendras and 66,000 of the BJP’s 78,000 booth committees in Bengal. “His strategy was to make inroads into villages with the help of the RSS’s social work,” says a senior state BJP leader. “He not only groomed grassroots leaders but worked to woo those pathologically inclined against the Trinamool Congress (TMC)—unlike the current crop of leaders who are joining us for vested interests.” With Ghosh also sidelined, it is Vijayvargiya and Roy who are calling the shots when it comes to selecting the candidates, planning the campaign and briefing the central leaders. “Dilip da was not taken into confidence while preparing the list of candidates, so he reserved his opinion when approached by the central leaders,” says another senior BJP leader from Bengal. He squarely blames Roy for Chattopadhyay’s demotion. “Subrata Chattopadhyay used to ensure that the BJP’s doors were not open to anyone and everyone. Roy was unable to mould him and convinced the central leaders that he wouldn’t be able to function freely with a staunch RSS leader.”
COMMOTION OVER CANDIDATES
The BJP’s indiscretion while taking on board leaders from other parties—primarily the TMC—has been more than apparent. The spate of inductions includes many ticket hopefuls who had failed to make the grade in the TMC. The BJP promised to field them as candidates and won them over. Several such questionable candidate choices are now blowing in the party’s face, with open revolt by the local cadre reported in the districts of Alipurduar, Cooch Behar, Jalpaiguri, Malda, Murshidabad, Nadia, Howrah, Hooghly, North 24 Parganas and South 24 Parganas. Of the 294 BJP candidates, 20-25 are facing resistance from within the party. Thirteen of them are TMC imports.
The BJP insists that all its candidates were selected on the basis of an outsourced ‘winnability’ survey. But many in the party doubt the claim. Take, for instance, the controversy surrounding Biswajit Kundu, a TMC turncoat who got the BJP ticket from Kalna in East Burdwan district. In 2014, Kundu had faced accusations of nepotism and irregularities in the recruitment of those who had cleared the Teacher Eligibility Test (TET). Local BJP workers question how the candidate survey could have picked him from among the probables for the Kalna seat.
Sentiments are equally strong against Siddhartha Naskar, the candidate from Nabadwip, an area with heavy Vaishnavite influence. Naskar is accused of malpractices at his ashram in the area, and several religious organisations have
apparently expressed dismay over his candidature. Naskar, though, has denied these allegations. Local BJP workers are similarly aghast that 89-year-old former TMC leader Rabindranath Bhattacharjee has been fielded from Singur in Hooghly district. Given his age, Bhattacharjee can barely walk without support and there’s widespread scepticism about how active he can be even if he wins the election.
Even Hooghly MP Locket Chatterjee’s candidature from Chinsurah has not gone down well with the cadre. “What was the need to give a ticket to Locket Chatterjee when Subir Nag was a far credible option? He is an able organiser with an RSS background,” says a BJP leader from Chatterjee’s Lok Sabha constituency. An upset Nag has distanced himself from the campaign and engrossed himself in organisational work. For the Champdani seat in Hooghly district, the BJP has fielded a businessman, Dilip Singh, whose primary reason for contesting the election is to ‘prevent extortion by other political parties’.
Clearly, the candidate survey alibi is doing little to address the resentment in the lower ranks of the BJP. “Had selections been made on the basis of the survey, how come Congress veteran Somen Mitra’s wife Shikha Mitra was named the candidate from Kolkata’s Chowringhee when she was not even a member of the BJP?” asks a party worker in Kolkata. Shikha Mitra had claimed to have turned down an offer to join the BJP. The party eventually named Debabrata Majhi as its candidate from Chowringhee.
DAMAGE CONTROL
Rattled by the discontent, Shah has asked senior leaders, such as Vijayvargiya, Shivprakash, Arvind Menon, B.L. Santhosh, Sunil Deodhar and Harish Dwivedi, to reach out and douse the fire. Prime Minister Narendra Modi too has pitched in with the troubleshooting. Sensing the mood in the Ghosh camp over the perceived importance being accorded to TMC inductees at the cost of displeasing oldtimers, Modi chose a packed election rally in Kharagpur on March 20 to shower praise on the state BJP chief. In Ghosh’s presence, Modi declared: “I am proud that the BJP has a state president like Dilip Ghosh. To ensure our victory, he has not had a peaceful [night] and did not get cowed down by Didi’s (Mamata Banerjee) threats either. He has braved several life-threatening attacks.” Modi added that the hard work put in by Ghosh had convinced him that the BJP would win the election.
Ghosh won the Kharagpur seat in 2016 by trouncing 11-time Congress MLA Gyan Singh Sohanpal. The prime minister lauding Ghosh when many in the BJP have written him off in the race for chief ministership was perhaps not without purpose. Barely six days ago, the BJP had announced its list of 123 candidates for the first four phases of voting, beginning March 27. Seven of them were TMC turncoats. The number was not significant, but so intense has been the exasperation that it sparked dissension in public by BJP workers.
Clearly, sections in the BJP cadre are unable to reconcile with defectors or ‘unworthy’ candidates being fielded from their constituencies in place of local leaders who have served the party for long and are popular. Not only is cadre morale down, the BJP faces the prospect of desertions and peeved leaders contesting as Independents to queer the pitch.
Some feel the BJP deliberately denied Ghosh a ticket to maintain suspense over its chief ministerial face, which has several contenders—Babul Supriyo, Swapan Dasgupta and former TMC heavyweight Suvendu Adhikari, to name a few. “The party wanted the campaign to be PM Modi versus Mamata. Giving Dilip da a ticket would have pitched him directly against Mamata. Moreover, while it would have enthused the Ghosh camp and some party veterans, it would have also provided ammo to rival power centres,” says a BJP general secretary, requesting anonymity.
Among these power centres, the BJP would certainly not like to antagonise Roy, who is already contesting the assembly election (from Krishnanagar North) against his wishes. Roy, who defected to the BJP in November 2017, has never won an election and had cited health reasons to stay out of the race this time as well. But Shah was insistent that he contest. Some in the BJP believe Shah wanted to tie Roy down to one constituency to stop him from meddling around and stoking resentment among BJP old-timers. The BJP central leadership believes Roy would be of immense use if the party fails to sweep the election but is within striking distance of the simple majority mark of 148. “Roy would be required to poach MLAs, so it’s but natural that he is being pampered now,” says the BJP general secretary.
Despite its high-decibel campaign, publicity blitzkrieg and big-ticket imports from both the TMC and the film and TV fraternity, the BJP, many argue, appears less buoyant than it was six months ago. “The party’s image has certainly taken a beating. If the PM and Union home minister have to come down to troubleshoot, it shows that the BJP lacks a state-level leadership to address basic problems,” says Sobhanlal Datta Gupta, professor of political science at Calcutta University. The big question: will the crisis in the BJP have a blink-and-go effect on voters who—in Datta Gupta’s words—have “made up their minds to vote out the Trinamool”, or will the BJP boat capsize just when the party thought it was about to anchor on the shore? ■
WHILE AMIT SHAH HAS DEPUTED SENIOR LEADERS TO DOUSE THE FIRE, PM MODI USED THE KHARAGPUR RALLY TO PLACATE THE ‘SIDELINED’ DILIP GHOSH