Burden of old promises weighs down West Bengal BJP, its leaders speak in different voices

Meanwhile, even as the battle lines are being drawn for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, BJP leaders are speaking in different voices. When West Bengal was rocked by violence during the recently concluded panchayat polls, several senior BJP leaders advocated the imposition of Article 355 in the State but former State BJP president Dilip Ghosh struck a discordant note.

On August 4, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA from Kurseong, Bishnu Prasad Sharma, staged a dharna inside the premises of the West Bengal Legislative Assembly. The dharna by the BJP MLA from the Darjeeling Hills was not against the Trinamool Congress government in the State but against the BJP government at the Centre.

Mr. Sharma told journalists that the people of the hills had given three consecutive MPs to the BJP because it had promised to fulfil their two political demands — finding a “permanent political solution” for the Darjeeling Hills, and according tribal status to 11 Gorkha communities in the hills. The MLA held a placard, which read that before the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the people of the hills needed “deliverance not assurance”.

The protest by the BJP MLA reveals that the party may face challenges in the Darjeeling Lok Sabha seat, a constituency that the BJP has won since 2009 over the promise of providing a permanent political solution to the people of the Darjeeling Hills. While the BJP leadership has changed the MPs representing the constituency — from former Union Minister Jaswant Singh in 2009 to S. S. Ahluwalia in 2014 to Raju Bista in 2019 — the promises relating to the people of the hills have remained only an assurance. 

Similarly, the assurances of reviving the tea industry in the foothills and the jute industry along the banks of the Hooghly have not yielded any results. These regions had elected BJP MPs in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, when the party won 18 of the 42 seats in the State. 

Meanwhile, even as the battle lines are being drawn for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, BJP leaders are speaking in different voices. When West Bengal was rocked by violence during the recently concluded panchayat polls, several senior leaders, including Leader of the Opposition in the State Assembly Suvendu Adhikari, and State BJP president Sukanta Majumdar, advocated the imposition of Article 355 in the State (a provision that states it’s the duty of the Union to protect States against external aggression and internal disturbance), former State BJP president Dilip Ghosh struck a discordant note. Mr. Ghosh said that democratically elected governments could only be removed by democratic means. Recently, Mr. Ghosh, who was credited with winning the party 18 seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, was dropped as a national vice president of the party. 

“There is a leadership crisis in the BJP in West Bengal. The party cannot speak in one voice and appears to be a divided house,” Biswanath Chakraborty, Professor, Political Science, Rabindra Bharati University said.

The central BJP leadership summoned the West Bengal party leadership a few times over the past few months, and emphasised that they should organise sustained movements against the Trinamool Congress government. The State BJP leadership is feeling the heat, and on Sunday, 11 district presidents of the party were replaced.