Allaying concerns about a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, countering the Trinamool Congress’s (TMC) narrative on language and culture, and an emphasis on women’s security and other issues will be the BJP’s focus as it heads towards the crucial Assembly elections in West Bengal next year.
West Bengal BJP president Samik Bhattacharya, the party’s national general secretary in charge of the state, Sunil Bansal, and other senior leaders met Union Home Minister Amit Shah in Delhi on Monday to apprise him of the situation in the state at the moment and discuss the party’s poll strategy.
Shah is learnt to have instructed the state unit to prepare for the SIR, an exercise already underway in Bihar amid the Opposition’s protests that it will lead to disenfranchisement of millions. West Bengal Chief Minister and TMC chairperson Mamata Banerjee has said she will not allow the Election Commission (EC) to conduct the voter verification drive. The TMC has referred to the SIR as “silent intensive rigging” and linked it to the proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC). The party’s Krishnanagar MP Mahua Moitra is among those who have moved the Supreme Court challenging the SIR.
The BJP has not denied the benefit of an SIR, saying it will weed out ineligible voters from the rolls. It has accused the TMC of taking advantage of an inflated voter list over the years. At the meeting, it was discussed that the party should ensure a significant presence of its workers for political messaging at the booth level when the SIR is conducted. It is learnt that Shah advised the state leadership to take steps to ensure there is no panic over the exercise.
‘Stop TMC misinformation’
The Home Minister is also learnt to have emphasised that the state unit should “clearly communicate” to people that the BJP is against infiltration and not Bangla or Bengalis. With Bangla speakers getting detained in several BJP-ruled states on suspicion of being undocumented Bangladeshi immigrants, the TMC has accused the party of linguistic profiling. On July 27, Mamata Banerjee launched a statewide “Bhasha Andolon (language movement)” to protest against the alleged harassment.
The BJP has since shot back at the CM, accusing her of “manufacturing issues” ahead of the Assembly polls that are less than a year away. Samik Bhattacharya has alleged that Mamata is more interested in “protecting Bangla-speaking infiltrators from Bangladesh”.
At the meeting, the BJP leaders discussed the TMC-fuelled narrative that portrays the party as one of “outsiders”, something that has damaged the party in previous elections. To stop this misinformation from spreading, state BJP leaders had been asked to organise public outreach programmes, sources said
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A senior leader who attended the meeting said it was agreed that women-related issues should be at the centre of the party’s campaign. The consensus was that there should be a focus on women’s safety in the wake of the R G Kar rape-murder case and the recent case of alleged rape at a law college in Kolkata in which a member of the TMC’s student wing is the main accused.
Another BJP functionary said the party would also focus on the Central government’s initiatives for the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe communities. “An all-out effort must be made to win the 2026 elections in Bengal. The party is working on it. We have been told that we must communicate how much the BJP has worked for the SC/ST communities,” said the leader.
The meeting with Shah came just days after the Bengal BJP started the process to form 43 organisational district committees. In March, the party had announced the names of 39 district presidents.
On July 18, Prime Minister Narendra Modi set the tone for the party’s election campaign in his address at a massive rally in Durgapur in Paschim Bardhaman district. After launching several development projects, Modi lashed out at the TMC government and accused it of enabling “infiltration” and hindering the state’s development through corruption and violence. “The TMC is actively helping infiltrators. I want to say this very clearly that those who are not the citizens of India and have entered illegally will be dealt with fairness in accordance with the Constitution.”
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Since recording its best-ever electoral performance in Bengal in the 2019 Lok Sabha election — winning 18 of 42parliamentary seats — the BJP has struggled to provide a sustained challenge to the TMC. In 2021, though it increased its tally to 77 seats, only five years after opening its account in the 294-member Assembly, organisational reverses and infighting set it back, and in the Lok Sabha elections last year its tally dropped to 12. The party has been hamstrung by internal feuds over the years and is attempting to overcome these challenges to effect a turnaround under Bhattacharya.