Kolkata: The next chief minister of West Bengal will be from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Union home minister Amit Shah declared Friday while appealing to voters in the state to give the party 35 of 42 Lok Sabha seats in the 2024 general election.
Shah reached West Bengal Friday, 24 hours ahead of the Bengali new year, to launch BJP’s renewed push after the party failed to dislodge the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress (TMC) in the 2021 assembly elections.
To begin his two-day tour to the state, he picked Bengal’s Birbhum district, which the BJP couldn’t wrest from the ruling TMC either in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls or 2021 Assembly polls — with the sole exception of Dubrajpur assembly seat in 2021.
Known to be a TMC stronghold, Birbhum has been under the clout of TMC strongman and the party’s district president Anubrata Mandal who is now lodged in Delhi’s Tihar jail in connection with his alleged role in a cross-border cattle smuggling nexus.
Addressing a public rally in Birbhum Friday, Shah made an attempt to boost the morale of the party cadres by setting a target of 35 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats in Bengal. “Give us 35 seats in 2024, Mamata Banerjee government won’t last in 2025. Mamata Banerjee wants to make her nephew the chief minister, but the next CM will be from BJP,” said Shah.
The BJP won 18 seats in Bengal in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls — the highest since the party made its electoral debut in the state. Its tally of MPs from the state dropped to 17 after Babul Supriyo’s exit and subsequent entry into the TMC.
In his speech, Shah took aim at CM Mamata Banerjee and her nephew Abhishek Banerjee, while touching on the theme of law and order in the state. “How can Ram Navami rally not be peaceful? This is the result of TMC’s appeasement politics,” he said, raking up the communal violence that broke out in Howrah and Hooghly districts last month.
“Didi and bhatija (Mamata and Abhishek) are engaging in crime and the only alternative is BJP. Do you want (cross-border) infiltration in Bengal? The only way to stop it is to choose the BJP. The BJP stopped cattle smuggling,” said Shah, referring to Mandal’s alleged ties to a cross-border cattle-smuggling nexus.
The TMC reacted by accusing Shah of misusing central agencies to target the Mamata-led party after it failed to form a government in Bengal after the 2021 assembly elections.
“What about funds to Bengal? He (Shah) was talking about corruption and sharing the dais with Suvendu Adhikari who was caught on camera taking money in the Narada sting operation,” said state minister Shashi Panja. She further termed Shah a “seasonal bird” who visits the state only before elections.
Both the TMC and the BJP are gearing up for the West Bengal Panchayat polls, which will be the next test of their political prowess.
Kolkata-based Political analyst Udayan Bandopadhyay told ThePrint, “The BJP knows Panchayat polls won’t yield desired results. Hence, it’s better to target Lok Sabha when there is time. With Anubrata Mondal out of the picture, the TMC will struggle a bit, but only time will tell if BJP can use this as an opportunity to defeat TMC in Birbhum.”
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)