Kolkata, Jan 7 (PTI) With just three months to go for the assembly polls, the BJP’s West Bengal unit on Wednesday announced its long-delayed state committee, unveiling a carefully weighted organisational reset that seeks to balance old loyalties, contain internal rivalries and ring-fence key electoral players ahead of a high-stakes contest.
The 35-member body, finalised nearly half a year after Samik Bhattacharya assumed charge as state president, signals a deliberate political choice: to privilege organisational discipline over individual prominence, streamline campaign management, and draw a clear line between leaders tasked with fighting elections and those entrusted with running the party machinery.
Though the leadership had initially planned to roll out the team before Durga Puja, persistent friction between the party’s old guard and post-2019 inductees repeatedly delayed the exercise, underlining the BJP’s unresolved internal churn in Bengal following its 2021 defeat.
Party insiders said the list bears the imprint of a principle laid down by central observer Sunil Bansal: leaders preparing to contest elections will not simultaneously run the organisation.
The outcome reflects a course correction without rupture: senior organisational hands dominate the structure, while calibrated inclusions and exclusions seek to stabilise factional fault lines rather than open new ones before polls.
The omissions have been as telling as the appointments. Former state president Dilip Ghosh has been kept out of the state committee, despite recent public messaging from the central leadership urging veterans to remain politically active.
During a recent visit, Union Home Minister Amit Shah reportedly asked Ghosh to step up his engagement, fuelling expectations of a formal organisational role.
Party insiders argue that the exclusion points to a conscious restructuring aimed at preventing parallel centres of authority as the BJP prepares for what many see as its toughest state contest since 2021. Several senior figures likely to fight the polls were deliberately kept outside the panel to ensure operational clarity during the campaign.
This logic is most evident in the reshuffle of general secretaries, the most powerful rung below the state president.
Of the five who served under the previous regime, only Jyotirmoy Singh Mahato and Locket Chatterjee have retained the post, anchoring organisational work in western and southern Bengal, regions where the BJP is keen to arrest erosion.
The other three, Agnimitra Paul, Jagannath Chatterjee and MLA Deepak Barman, have been elevated as vice-presidents, a move widely read within the party as honour without operational control. All three are expected to be in the electoral fray.
“Fighting an election and running an election are two very different tasks,” a senior BJP functionary said, summing up the thinking behind the redesign.
Among the key beneficiaries of the reshuffle is Bishnupur MP Saumitra Khan, who has been elevated as a general secretary.
He is joined by north Bengal organiser Bapi Goswami and Kolkata-based organiser Shashi Agnihotri, leaders unlikely to be candidates and chosen instead for booth-level management and cadre mobilisation.
Their elevation also reflects a careful old-new balance: Goswami represents the RSS-rooted old cadre, while Khan, a post-2019 inductee, is being rewarded for holding ground in Bishnupur even as the party’s southern Bengal base thinned after 2021.
At the same time, Bhattacharya has reopened doors for sidelined veterans. The return of Tanuja Chakraborty as vice-president, once the face of the party’s women’s wing, signals selective rehabilitation of sections of the old cadre base.
Veteran leader Ali Hossain has also been reinstated as Minority Morcha president, replacing Charles Nandi, indicating a retreat from experimentation in minority-facing structures close to polling.
The BJP also named new heads for its frontal organisations, a crucial mobilisation layer ahead of the polls. Indranil Khan will continue to lead the youth wing, Falguni Patra the Mahila Morcha, Rajiv Bhowmik the Kisan Morcha, Shubhendu Sarkar the OBC Morcha and Sujit Biswas the SC Morcha. MP Khagen Murmu has been appointed head of the ST Morcha.
Equally notable is the accommodation of turncoat TMC leader Tapas Ray as vice-president, reinforcing the BJP’s continued dependence on leaders with TMC backgrounds to expand its urban and semi-urban footprint, a strategy that has delivered mixed electoral returns in the past against the ruling party.
In all, the committee comprises 12 vice-presidents, 5 general secretaries and 12 secretaries, with women accounting for 7 members, or roughly one-fifth of the total strength. Separate announcements also named the heads of various frontal wings as the party looks to activate its social coalitions.
For a party that surged to the centre of Bengal’s political stage in 2021, but struggled thereafter to convert momentum into sustained organisational coherence, the new committee represents less a dramatic overhaul than a tactical recalibration, a political analyst said.
With the Election Commission expected to announce the poll schedule after the SIR process concludes in February, the BJP’s latest organisational bet appears aimed at damping internal disquiet, sharpening booth-level focus and presenting a united, if carefully curated, front.
The 294-member West Bengal Assembly is due to go to polls in April-May. PTI PNT NN
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