New Delhi: From BJP president J.P. Nadda, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh to his Cabinet colleague Smriti Irani, a number of BJP leaders have either camped or are set to camp at Birbhum district in West Bengal over the next few days.
With assembly elections in the state just months away, the BJP has been paying special attention to the district. While Nadda launched the party’s second Poriborton Yatra from Birbhum Tuesday, Home Minister Amit Shah had held a roadshow in the district last month.
Chief among the reasons for the BJP focus on the district is one man — the Trinamool Congress (TMC) Birbhum president Anubrata Mondal, a close aide of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and, according to the BJP, her most trusted muscleman.
A senior BJP leader alleged that Mondal is behind the rigging and capturing of booths in West Bengal. According to the leader, if not for Mondal, the BJP would have won both the Lok Sabha seats in the district — Bolpur and Birbhum — in the 2019 elections.
“When the BJP was leading in the North Bengal and Jangalmahal regions in 2019, Birbhum was the only area where we failed despite having won Bolpur in 2014,” the BJP leader said.
“Amit Shah’s strategy is to capture this Trinamool bastion, which is why the BJP is deploying an extra contingent here. One of the main reasons for this special focus is that it is the area of Mamata’s most trusted muscleman who is responsible for rigging elections. We fear he can create disturbance in the district to win all sitting seats.”
According to West Bengal BJP vice-president Jay Prakash Majumdar, Mondal is so notorious, that the Election Commission (EC) monitored his movements during the 2019 Parliamentary elections.
“The EC, during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, kept him under tight surveillance and ordered that his movements be videographed,” Majumdar said. “It also banned the use of his mobile phone but he used others’ mobiles. His word is final in Birbhum district, whether it is district magistrate or the SP. He is a don and his army intimidates people and manages the rigging. Our effort is to end his mafia and jungle raj in this area.”
The TMC termed the charges as baseless. “The BJP has a habit of making such baseless noise,” the TMC MP from Bolpur Asit Kumar Mal told ThePrint. “People believe he (Mondal) is the god of the district.”
The district is a TMC bastion. In the 2016 assembly elections, the ruling party won nine assembly seats from here while the remaining two were shared by the CPI(M) and the Congress.
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BJP and Mondal
The BJP has time and again attacked Mondal and accused him of orchestrating violence in the state. In 2018, during a party agitation over its workers being killed in West Bengal, the BJP’s state unit chief Dilip Ghosh made a veiled reference to Mondal, popularly known as Kesto.
“A lot of TMC leaders are threatening our workers. Either they will go to jail or there will be direct encounters,” Ghosh had then said. “No Kesto or Bistu will be alive. We have not signed a bond where it is written that we will offer them rasgulla if they beat us.”
Mondal too is known to take on the BJP. In 2017, he was publicly rebuked by Mamata over a jibe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Mondal had then said that he would tear off Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s tongue and burn BJP leaders in Birbhum if the party’s supporters ever dared to set ablaze a Muslim in West Bengal as had then happened to a Malda man in Rajasthan.
“The TMC has censured him publicly many times but due to his muscle power and electoral importance, he remains a trusted confidante of Mamata,” a second senior BJP leader said.
“The party tried to end his hold by negotiating with TMC MP Satabdi Roy, whose induction was almost final. Only a meeting with Shah was pending but at the last moment, she ditched us and Mamata then placated her,” the leader added.
“Our work would have been easier in Birbhum if she had joined. We are now taking extra efforts here although it won’t be easy as a lot of seats have considerable Muslim population.”
Arjun Singh, the BJP MP from Barrackpore, alleged that Mondal indulges in a bunch of illegal activities in the district. “Mondal alias Kesto has acquired wealth through illegal sand mining and coal block mining,” Singh said. “Several gangs operate in this area due to his patronage.”
Cultural war for Bengali identity
The BJP focus on Birbhum isn’t only due to Mondal. The party is looking to appropriate Bengali cultural icon Rabindranath Tagore to counter the chief minister’s ‘outsider’ charge.
Nadda and Shah have visited the Visva-Bharati University, founded by Tagore, at least a dozen times in recent months. The university is located at Santiniketan in Birbhum district.
“Rabindranath Tagore has a special place in the heart of every Bengali. He is our cultural icon,” Majumdar said. “It will be a matter of pride for the BJP to have a strong presence in Tagore land. Every region has its uniqueness but Tagore land is special for BJP and its cultural nationalism.”
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