Kolkata, Aug 18 (PTI) The BJP has won the battle for power in West Bengal, but three months into government, it is confronting a more complicated political test: how to expand and consolidate the party without allowing its organisation and identity to be reshaped by the very political culture it spent years campaigning against.
The contradiction is increasingly visible on two fronts.
Organisationally, state BJP president Samik Bhattacharya has launched a direct warning against extortion, intimidation and other activities that could make the BJP indistinguishable from the TMC it displaced.
Politically, the party is dealing with resentment among sections of its workers over the accommodation and growing proximity of former TMC leaders and dissidents, some of whom had once been attacked by the BJP as symbols of the alleged corruption and political culture of the previous regime.
The two challenges are closely connected. At their core is a question that the Bengal BJP can no longer avoid: how much of the political establishment it defeated can the party absorb without accepting the political practices associated with the TMC? Bhattacharya has made it clear that the party’s disciplinary line will not be diluted.
At a recent organisational training programme attended by BJP legislators and district presidents, he cautioned elected representatives against behaving as if they were “chief ministers” of their respective assembly seats and warned them of activities such as measuring flats, locking shops or houses and interfering in local affairs.
“Do not do anything that makes people unable to find a difference between you and the Trinamool Congress,” Bhattacharya told the gathering.
He also warned that the party was keeping dossiers on errant leaders and that those “files” could be opened at the appropriate time if they failed to mend their ways.
Bhattacharya made it clear that even elected representatives would not be immune from action, saying no MLA or MP involved in corruption would be spared.
The state BJP has suspended 22 functionaries, including several mandal-level leaders, after more than 250 leaders and workers were served show-cause notices over allegations ranging from extortion and attempts to occupy TMC offices to anti-party activities.
The crackdown is significant because the BJP’s rise in Bengal was built substantially on the promise of providing an alternative to the TMC’s “cut-money, syndicate and extortion” networks.
State minister Agnimitra Paul said, “We will not say one thing in public and another in private. We are not like the previous government. What we say, we do.” She insisted that those involved in extortion would face action.
Panchayat and Rural Development Minister Dilip Ghosh has also drawn a line over the induction of former TMC leaders, saying BJP workers would not accept those who had allegedly caused them political harm.
That sentiment explains the second challenge confronting the party — managing the political fallout of its proximity to sections of the former ruling establishment.
The BJP has sought to maintain a distinction between political cooperation and formal induction. The route taken by nearly 20 rebel TMC Lok Sabha MPs, who chose to merge with the little-known NCPI while extending support to the NDA, was a striking example.
The arrangement gave the BJP a parliamentary advantage without requiring it to immediately hand over party flags to leaders its Bengal cadres had fought for years.
The induction of former TMC leaders Sukhendu Sekhar Ray, Sushmita Dev and Prakash Chik Baraik, once targeted by the BJP over corruption allegations, and their quick elevation to the Rajya Sabha has unsettled sections of the cadre, reinforcing the perception that political switchovers can bring faster rewards than years of organisational work.
After the assembly poll victory, Bhattacharya had said, “Right now, the door is closed. We don’t need any TMC leader to win elections anymore. We have won on our own.” At the same time, he had left room for political flexibility, observing that in politics “two plus two is not always four”, while maintaining that TMC leaders facing allegations of corruption, recruitment scams or links with syndicate networks would not be welcome.
That balancing act reflects the larger dilemma.
The BJP cannot afford to treat every former TMC leader as politically untouchable, particularly when the rival party is facing internal discontent. But every high-profile accommodation carries the risk of confusing a cadre base that spent years being told that the TMC represented the political culture the BJP was fighting to replace.
The party has seen the consequences of this before. Ahead of the 2021 assembly election, the BJP’s rapid expansion through the induction of a large number of TMC leaders helped it widen its electoral footprint. But the influx also generated tensions between its established organisation and newcomers.
The subsequent return of several leaders to the TMC and the factional complications exposed the difference between electoral expansion and organisational integration.
The present situation is more consequential because the BJP is now the ruling party.
A party in opposition can justify defections as an electoral strategy. A ruling party has to simultaneously govern, discipline its cadres and preserve the credibility of the political alternative on which it won power.
That is why Bhattacharya’s warnings assume a larger significance than an internal disciplinary exercise.
“The danger for the BJP is not that TMC leaders are joining it; it is that the distinction between the BJP and the TMC could gradually disappear in the eyes of its own workers and voters,” a political analyst said.
The analyst said the BJP had won Bengal by offering an alternative political model and that reproducing the same political ecosystem it had spent years attacking could become a credibility problem at the grassroots.
Another political analyst, reflecting on the BJP’s experience after the 2021 defections, said the party had learnt that “electoral expansion through defections can be achieved much faster than organisational integration”. PTI PNT BDC
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