Shah’s Bengal outreach is timed to strengthen the party at the grassroots level ahead of critical panchayat elections next year, and then the 2019 national elections
In a move heavy with symbolism, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah on Tuesday launched ‘Mission Bengal’ from Naxalbari village, the cradle of the violent Naxalite movement in the 1960s, today more recognisable as the Maoist insurgency.
Shah’s Bengal outreach is timed to strengthen the party at the grassroots level ahead of critical panchayat elections next year, and then the 2019 national elections, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi will seek a second term.
The choice of Naxalbari also assumes political significance, coming as it does in the wake of the murder of at least 25 CRPF personnel in Sukma, Chhattisgarh, by Maoists.
Aiming to wrest the state, once a Left bastion, from the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC), the BJP president will be here for three days as part of his ‘Vistaar Yatra’. Shah kicked off his tour Tuesday with a clear message to party workers, asking them to engage themselves pro -actively at the booth levels in order to emerge as the most potent political force in the state.
While the choice of Naxalbari may have been symbolic -- the hill town has undergone a thorough political transformation in the last 40 years – Shah minced no words when he condemned the “cult of violence” and assured the workers of Vikas (development) as the new political mantra.
Shah will hold a party workers’ meeting on Wednesday at Bhawanipur, currently Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s Assembly constituency. He will visit slum areas in the constituency from where Banerjee began her political journey three decades ago.
The choice of both towns is intended to send the message that the BJP is now ready to take on both the CPM and the TMC.
“Bengal was once called Sonar Bangla. At present it is known for unemployment, violence and politics of appeasement which has led to a lot of misrule.” Shah said after a booth level meeting.
He also claimed that the state government was not allowing benefits of central welfare schemes to reach them. “While the far-flung villages of the country are getting the advantage of the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY), here in Bengal the state government is posing impediments to prevent people to get the advantage of the Central scheme,” he said, adding that the more the state government opposed the BJP, the more the latter would grow.
Barely 150 km away, in Cooch Behar district, Banjerjee blamed the BJP and Shah for trying to communally polarise the state. “I urge you not to lend any support to the BJP because they only create a division between people on the basis of religion. Whoever had supported them had regretted later,” she said.
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