Bengal BJP goes for organisational overhaul

KOLKATA: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s West Bengal unit would undergo an organisational overhaul and the process would be over by November ahead of the municipal and assembly elections due in the state over the next two years, according to people aware of the development.

The changes will happen from the booth to the state level and only BJP state chief Dilip Ghosh will retain his post until 2021, the people added.

The BJP made significant inroads into West Bengal in April-May national polls by winning 18 of the state’s 42 seats. It has now set a target of winning 200 of the state’s 294 assembly seats. The BJP won just three seats in 2016 state elections.

The BJP shared the party’s organisational election schedule with district unit chiefs on Tuesday. It plans to reconstitute booth-level committees and hold elections to elect their heads between September 11 and September 30. Block-level committees would have to be formed between October 11 and October 31.

The district committees and the state executive will have to be reconstituted between November 11 and 30.

This organisational overhaul follows the BJP’s membership drive that enlisted 75 lakh members in over a month in West Bengal. These members include over 20 lakh people, who have renewed their memberships.

“These new members will be engaged in the formation of booth level committees,” said BJP’s state executive member Tushar Kanti Ghosh.

Booth-level committees are crucial for strengthening the grassroots organisation, which has been one of the BJP’s drawbacks in West Bengal.

BJP leaders said now they have committees for over 50,000 of the state’s 78,000 booths. As part of the new membership drive, the BJP leaders claimed to have enlisted 30 to 50 members each for about 10,000 booths where the party had no presence.

“During the membership drive, we found members from nearly all booths. Our aim is to form committees for all the 78,000 booths. We are confident of forming committees for 90% of the booths,” said Bengal state general secretary Pratap Banerjee.

Udayan Bandyopadhyay, a political science professor at Kolkata’s Bangabasi College, said that organisational changes may also lead to factional fights in the party since many leaders and workers from other parties have joined the party at various levels.

He said they are expected to be given important berths. “How the party manages these changes and strikes a balance between old-timers and newcomers will be one of the determining factors of their success,” said Bandyopadhyay. .