Amit Shah told BJP supporters that the party was yet to reach its ‘saturation point’.
The national president of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Amit Shah is on a three-day trip to Bengal and in several rounds of meetings he met state party leaders of different levels on Monday.
Sources within the party said that a message loud and clear has been sent across that Bengal was one of the targets of the party in the next general election and workers needed to pull up their socks in order to strengthen the organisation here.
“During his last visit here he had said that there should be booth committees at all the 77,000 booths of the state but the state BJP could not complete that task fully and that is one of the reasons why Shah is not very happy with the performance,” said a senior BJP leader who was present at the meeting. He said that Shah was happy about the prominence of youth in the party.
It was also found out that Shah had said that there was no place for complacency. “He has said that for BJP only sky is the limit. The party is far from its saturation point. When we form government in states like Kerala and Bengal then we may think that we have achieved something,” said another senior leader of the party who was at the meeting.
During interaction one of the main problems which party members said was about atrocities of the ruling party. “We said that we are unable to put up any meeting or rally. The state government has been using police and administration against us. Our men have been beaten up left and right. Shah said that he had heard those stories before and that he would not like to hear those repetitions. He said that he would like to hear how have BJP members retaliated to the atrocities. We need to fight back and payback in the same coin,” another senior state leaders said.
Reacting to these, state education minister and senior TMC leader, Dr Partha Chatterjee said, “Many BJP leaders, small to big, have come to Bengal to stir up religious sentiments but people of Bengal have remained unmoved. They will probably have to engineer another Godhra incident here before they gain grounds in Bengal and that is what they are trying,” Chatterjee said.
Sources also said that Shah asked party state president Dilip Ghosh what special programme the party intended to do to mark the six special days for the party in a year. “To which Ghosh couldn’t give a satisfying reply,” a senior leader said.
He also said that Shah asked for a time frame by which the 60 per cent of booth level committee which remained to be made, would be completed. “Leaders said that it would be done by December this year. To which he said that he gave them another month and he would be back in January to take stock of things,” the source said.
Referring to the logjam at the hills, Shah reportedly said that the Centre too was worried and that the state unit should write to the Centre asking for an intervention.
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 "Kailash Vijayvargiya, Amit Shah and Dilip Ghosh")
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