Concerned Over Slippery Grounds of Jangalmahal, JP Nadda to Visit Bengal Again to Strengthen BJP’s Hold
BJP national president Jagat Prakash Nadda will visit West Bengal once again on November 6 to hold a series of meetings in Burdwan and West Midnapore districts. This will be Nadda’s second visit to Bengal in less than a month. Earlier, he visited the state on October 19 and held a series of meetings in Siliguri.
However, this time with focus on Jangalmahal belt, Nadda has decided to visit Burdwan and West Midnapore districts, where BJP has been losing its ground in the past few months.
It was learnt that Nadda will address the ‘Karyakarta’ and ‘Samajik Samuha’ (with representatives of various communities) meetings of the party on November 6 and 7.
Senior leaders, including Dilip Ghosh, Kailash Vijayvargiya, Mukul Roy and Locket Chatterjee will reach Burdwan and Midnapore a day before Nadda’s visit to oversee all the arrangements.
With 2021 state Assembly polls in sight, both Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the BJP are working hard to outdo each other.
The state unit of BJP has already raised the political temperature with ‘Nabanna Chalo Abhijan’ on August 8 and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s virtual greetings to people during Durga Puja on ‘sashthi’.
The BJP has grown exponentially in North Bengal but in recent months it lost its grip in the Jangalmahal belt and it is also going to face setback after Bimal Gurung joined Mamata’s camp. Therefore, in the 2021 Assembly polls, the party has chosen Burdwan and West Midnapore to re-mobilise the workers to take on the TMC.
Out of eight Lok Sabha seats, including Cooch Behar, Alipurduar, Jalpaiguri, Darjeeling, Raigunj, Balurghat, North Malda and South Malda in North Bengal, Mamata has miserably failed to win a single seat as seven out of eight went to BJP, while Malda South was secured by (late) Ghani Khan Chowdhury’s brother Abu Hasem Khan Chowdhury (Congress), popularly known as ‘Dalu da’.
In Malda North, BJP’s Khagen Murmu defeated sitting TMC MP Mausam Noor, who was in Congress before switching to TMC in last Lok Sabha elections. In Malda South ‘Dalu da’ won the seat by defeating BJP’s Sreerupa Mitra Chaudhury. TMC’s Md Moazzem Hossain stood third with 27.47 vote share.
In rest of the seats, BJP’s Nisith Pramanik, John Barla, Jayanta Kumar Ray, Raju Singh Bisht, Deboshree Chaudhary, Sukanta Majumdar and Khagen Murmu had sent shock waves in the TMC camp by winning Cooch Behar, Alipurduar, Jalpaiguri, Darjeeling, Raiganj, Balurghat and North Malda respectively in the last Lok Sabha.
