Dissent in Bengal BJP spreads to districts where it performed best in polls; rejig stalled

Dissent in the West Bengal unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) against appointment of many new leaders and removal of some old-timers during the recent organizational changes has spread to some of the districts where the party recorded its best performance in recent years.

Rattled by the development, state leaders have been compelled to put the formation of state and district-level committees on hold although BJP national general secretary (organization) B L Santhosh wanted the process to be completed by mid-January said some of the office-bearers.

“Dissidence has now emerged even in Purulia and Bankura districts where the BJP did well in the panchayat, Lok Sabha and assembly polls in 2015, 2019 and 2021 respectively. The central leadership in Delhi has been informed about the rumblings but no line of action could be charted till Friday night,” a top state BJP leader told HT on condition of anonymity.

The rumblings started soon after December 22 when the Bengal unit announced the names of 11 new vice-presidents, five general secretaries, 42 organizational district unit presidents, 12 state secretaries, the morcha (front) presidents and the heads of several cells. The rejig made not just some veterans, who were left out, unhappy but also left leaders from the Dalit Matua community, headed by Union minister of state Shantanu Thakur, grumbling.

Following some protests, Bengal BJP president Sukanta Majumdar dissolved the cells and departments on January 13 but that did not change the scenario.

Bengal’s tribal population stood at 5.29 million during the 2011 census, accounting for about 5.8% of the total population. In sharp contrast, the SC population, according to the Union ministry of social justice and empowerment, stood at 21.4 million, or 23.51 % of the total population of 91.3 million, which is now projected to be 101.9 million.

The highest concentration of the tribal population is found in the districts of Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri, Alipurduar, South Dinajpur, West Midnapore, Bankura and Purulia. The scheduled tribe (ST) population has 16 assembly seats reserved for it.

For the much bigger scheduled caste (SC) population, which is spread across Bengal, 68 assembly seats, out of the state’s 294, are reserved.

Analysts and political leaders maintain that without the support of the SC and ST communities the BJP could not have set the record of winning 18 of Bengal’s 42 Lok Sabha seats in 2019 and 77 assembly seats last year.

In Bankura district, the BJP won both Lok Sabha seats in 2019 and seven of the 12 assembly seats in 2021.

Amarnath Shakha, the BJP legislator from Onda in Bankura and Nirmal Dhara the lawmaker from Indus, left all WhatsApp groups of the BJP in December along with four other legislators after two new organizational district presidents were appointed.

On Thursday, Shakha and Dhara wrote to the Union home ministry requesting recall of their security cover provided by the Centre.

“I made the request for personal reasons,” said Shakha, claiming that he was not leaving the BJP to join another party.

Even as Dhara made a similar claim, state BJP leaders said the two legislators, along with two others from Bankura district, Niladri Sekhar Dana and Dibakar Gharami, had shot an email to BJP national president J P Nadda seeking removal of the Bankura and Sonamukhi organizational district unit presidents, Sunil Rudra Mondal and Billeswar Singha, who are young leaders.

In the adjoining Purulia district, the BJP controls all three Lok Sabha segments and six of the nine assembly constituencies. One of the MPs, Dr Subhas Sarkar, was made a Union minister of state last year.

Five BJP legislators from Purulia have written a similar mail to Nadda demanding removal of the new district unit president Vivek Ranga, reportedly calling him an outsider.

State BJP leaders said the unhappy legislators include Narahari Mahato, Kamala Kanta Hansda and Sudip Mukherjee. None of them commented on the mail.

In West Midnapore district, where the BJP’s national vice-president and former state president Dilip Ghosh represents the Midnapore Lok Sabha seat, a Yuva Morcha (youth front) leader joined the Trinamool Congress (TMC) on Wednesday along with his followers.

In Birbhum district, where the BJP could wrest only one of the 11 assembly seats last year, several leaders have left the party’s WhatsApp groups.

“These are rumours. There is no rebellion here,” said Anup Saha, Birbum’s sole BJP legislator from Dubrajpur and a newly-selected national vice-president.

A state BJP leader said that Sheikh Shamad, the BJP’s minority cell leader in Birbhum, a district with 37.06 % Muslim population according to the 2011 census, left the party last week.

“There is unhappiness among Muslim workers and leaders in Jalpaiguri district in north Bengal and at Baruipur in South 24 Parganas district in south Bengal. The party had to put in a lot of effort to get them on board,” said the state leader, requesting anonymity.

“I am not aware of the two letters reportedly sent to the central leadership from Purulia and Bankura. These are internal matters of the party and will be settled internally,” Bengal BJP’s chief spokesperson Samik Bhattacharya told HT.

These developments took place days after union minister of state and Dalit Matua leader Shantanu Thakur on Monday organized a picnic with his followers and a section of disgruntled BJP leaders who were removed from the state committee.

Thakur and his brother Subrata, the legislator from Gaighata in North 24 Parganas district, said implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) is the principal demand of the Matuas and they will discuss it with BJP central leaders and Union home minister Amit Shah.

The Matuas are a part of the large Hindu Namasudra community that migrated from East Pakistan (Now Bangladesh) during India’s partition in 1947 and the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War to escape religious persecution.

The Centre has said that it is in the process of framing laws for the CAA which the Parliament passed in 2020. The law offers citizenship to non-Muslims who entered India from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh before 2015. The TMC insists that the law is unconstitutional as it links citizenship to faith in a secular country.

Shantanu Thakur and four legislators left all WhatsApp groups of the West Bengal BJP on January 4, saying the Matua community was not properly represented in the new committees.

On January 15, Thakur demanded the removal of Bengal BJP general secretary (organization) Amitava Chakraborty without naming the latter. He said Chakraborty was responsible for the rejig and had brought in people of his choice.

On January 17, huge posters, demanding Chakraborty’s removal, appeared around the Bengal BJP headquarters at Muralidhar Sen Lane in central Kolkata. In one poster, he was accused of being the agent of chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s election strategist Prashant Kishor.

While Chakraborty avoided the media, Samik Bhattacharya said the former was above the bickering and was being unnecessarily dragged into a controversy.

“Chakraborty sent a report to the central leadership after the posters appeared,” said a state BJP leader who did not want to be named.

Amid speculation in political circles that some of the dissidents many eventually switch allegiance and join the ruling party, TMC leaders said the rumblings carry proof of the BJP’s organizational weakness.

“Buoyed by the Lok Sabha results, the BJP thought it had built a massive organizational structure in Bengal. But this structure stood on a feeble foundation which is now crumbling. The BJP’s troubles started with the disgruntled old-timers and Matua leaders and has not spread to the districts. The party will collapse like a house of cards,” said TMC Lok Sabha member Saugata Roy.

Though the BJP captured 77 seats in the assembly polls last year, its tally in the Bengal legislative assembly has now effectively come down to 70. Five BJP legislators have joined the TMC since June although none have resigned from the party yet. The ruling party also wrested the Santipur and Dinhata seats from the BJP in the by-polls that were held as the BJP’s winning candidates wanted to retain their Lok Sabha seats.

The BJP had welcomed many TMC turncoats who could not win elections. Among them, Rajib Banerjee, a former minister, and Sabyasachi Dutta, the former mayor of Salt Lake, returned to the ruling party last year.

Experts feel that the dissidence is the fallout of disillusionment.

“Many BJP leaders had assumed that they would come in power in Bengal. The rumblings and dissent are an expression of their frustration,” said Kolkata-based political science professor Udayan Bandopadhyay.