Mathabhanga (Cooch Behar): Thursday was a busy day for Nisith Pramanik, the BJP’s former Cooch Behar MP who was minister of state for home, youth affairs and sports in the Modi cabinet between 2021 and 2024.
It is not often that Ram Navami falls in the middle of an election season like it did this time, and Pramanik, who is the BJP’s contestant from the Mathabhanga assembly constituency (Scheduled Caste reserved), knows that. From early morning, Pramanik, dressed in a light pink kurta and white pyajama and sporting a red tilak had a packed schedule.
Pramanik, who comes from the Rajbanshi community, visited the local Ram Navami mela at Mathabhanga’s Beltala and went to offer puja at the temple there. After finishing, he, along with BJP’s Cooch Behar district president Abhijit Barman and a handful of local leaders, moved to another temple in Ghoksadanga locality.
After offering puja there, he participated briefly in the Ram Navami sobha yatra in the neighbourhood, organised by a motley group of boisterous young men, carrying saffron flags and shouting Jai Shri Ram with music systems blaring bhajan pop in the background.
After spending some time with the youngsters, some of whom got themselves clicked with him, he zipped off in his vehicle to his next destination. “We have one programme after another lined up throughout the day,” he told ThePrint amid the din.
The turnout at the two events where ThePrint followed him was anything but impressive considering Pramanik’s reputation as a local strongman and a former MP. Locals in the area recall that there was a time, and not long back, when Pramanik would lead a loyal group of young men in bikes, who would follow him everywhere.
“That does not happen anymore… He is a big man now and moves with his convoy of security personnel wherever he goes,” a local BJP worker told ThePrint in Mathabhanga.
A second BJP worker offered an explanation. “He (Nisith) is not from Mathabhanga constituency… he is from Dinhata. He left Dinhata to come here,” he said, before cautioning, “but don’t go by the crowd. Mathabhanga is one of the safest BJP seats in Cooch Behar. Here people do not go by the face. They vote for the ‘lotus’ (the BJP’s election symbol).”
Mathabhanga is one of the nine assembly seats that come under the Cooch Behar Parliamentary constituency. While the BJP lost the Cooch Behar seat to the Trinamool Congress in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, it had won eight out of the nine seats in the 2021 assembly elections. The one seat it lost was Sitai.
Locals in Cooch Behar district are keeping their fingers crossed in the run-up to the polls next month. The district has a history of poll-related violence. In the 2021 assembly elections, five people were killed in two separate incidents, including one where four people were killed in firing by CISF personnel on poll duty in Sitalkuchi assembly seat, with the circumstances of the incident still remaining contested.
In 2021, the BJP’s Sushil Barman won from Mathabhanga with 52.87 percent votes, defeating Trinamool Congress’ Girindra Nath Barman, who got 40 percent of the total votes.
But the party dropped Sushil Barman this time in favour of Pramanik. This has not gone down well with the cadre as well as the BJP’s old guard in Cooch Behar, who still consider him an outsider. Pramanik, a resident of Dinhata, had joined the BJP from Trinamool Congress just before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and was given ticket from Cooch Behar.
A controversial figure, Pramanik, who was a youth leader in Trinamool Congress, went on to win from the seat by a margin of 54,000 votes, defeating the Trinamool Congress’ Paresh Chandra Adhikary.
His joining the BJP back then had ruffled feathers of the BJP local leaders, party insiders in Cooch Behar said. But his massive victory silenced them. “This was the first time the BJP won the Cooch Behar Lok Sabha seat,” one of the leaders, who did not want to be named, told ThePrint.
BJP old-timers main grouse against the party high command is that in promoting “rank outsiders” like Pramanik, it has ignored the local leadership, who toiled hard for the party from the beginning.
Considered close to Union Home Minister Amit Shah and BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari, another Trinamool import, local leaders hold Pramanik responsible for “weakening” the party’s organisational structure in Cooch Behar.
A controversial figure, Pramanik, who was a youth leader in Trinamool Congress, went on to win from the seat by a margin of 54,000 votes, defeating Trinamool Congress’ Paresh Chandra Adhikary.
His joining the BJP back then had ruffled feathers of the BJP local leaders, party insiders in Cooch Behar said. But his massive victory silenced them. “This was the first time the BJP won the Cooch Behar Lok Sabha seat,” one of the leaders, who did not want to be named, told ThePrint.
BJP old-timers’ main grouse against the party high command is that in promoting “rank outsiders” like Pramanik, it has ignored the local leadership, who toiled hard for the party from the beginning.
Considered close to Union Home Minister Amit Shah and BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari, another Trinamool import, local leaders hold Pramanik responsible for “weakening” the party’s organisational structure in Cooch Behar.
“He is not that popular anymore. Ask the people of Cooch Behar, how many times he was seen in the constituency to hear his constituents’ problems after winning in 2019. He became very arrogant and hardly met anybody, including the party workers,” a BJP leader, who did not want to be named, told ThePrint.
The old-timers in the region also hold him “responsible for creating a rift” in the party. “It’s the old BJP versus the new BJP in Cooch Behar today. The old guard – be it leaders or workers – have been sidelined. This has led to heartburn among the original BJP leaders,” a second BJP leader said.
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‘An embarrassment’
The result of this old versus new BJP has been playing out in Cooch Behar since the 2021 assembly election.
In 2021, Pramanik was given a ticket to contest from his home constituency, Dinhata, against Trinamool Congress’ Udayan Guha. It was a tough fight. Pramanik, who was the sitting MP from Cooch Behar just about managed to scrape through, winning by just 57 votes.
Pramanik’s narrow win looked underwhelming against the backdrop of the BJP’s surge from 3 seats in 2016 to an all-time high of 77.
Soon after though, he vacated the Dinhata seat and joined the Modi cabinet. He was given dual portfolios – Minister of State, Home and Youth and Sports Affairs.
“Being the sitting MP from Cooch Behar, it was an embarrassment for him to win by a slender margin of 57 votes,” a party leader in Cooch Behar said.
In the bypoll that was held in Dinhata, TMC’s Udayan Guha went on to win by a huge margin of over 1.89 lakh votes.
“His abandoning the Dinhata seat after winning angered the local party workers, who had toiled tirelessly for his win. This widened the gap between him and the party workers. The old guard saw how people, who have joined recently from other parties, were being blindly promoted,” a BJP youth leader said.
In Dinhata, the BJP has put up Ajay Roy, considered a protege of Pramanik.
Pramanik, who was again given a ticket from Cooch Behar in the 2024 Lok Sabha seat, lost by over eight lakh votes to Trinamool Congress’ Jagadish Chandra Barma Basuna.
Local leaders said the cadre, including those of the BJP’s ideological parent RSS, were not as active in 2024 as they should have been.
An RSS worker told ThePrint, “We had coined a phrase for ourselves here in Cooch Behar–hum BJP ke saath bhi hai, paas bhi hain lekin peeche nahin hai (We are with the BJP, we are beside it, but we are not behind it.)
One of the several local leaders ThePrint spoke to in Cooch Behar said, “He (Pramanik) ran away to Mathabhanga from Dinhata this time because he was afraid he might lose. The people here are angry with him,” the first BJP leader quoted earlier said.
He said Pramanik “did not do enough” to strengthen the party’s organisational structure in Cooch Behar.
“We had worked from the scratch to set up and strengthen our booth committees in each and every ward over a period of time. You go and visit the booth committees today in Cooch Behar…. They are a pale shade of what they used to be. The booth committees have weakened considerably in recent years,” the youth leader said.
ThePrint called Pramanik multiple times on his cell phone for a comment to what party workers had said but he did not respond. The report will be updated as and when he responds.
(Edited by Ajeet Tiwari)