After the assembly election debacle in West Bengal, the state unit of the BJP on Wednesday announced a fresh list of 72 committee members, which includes morcha presidents, incharges and co-incharges of different departments in the party.
After Sukanta Majumdar replaced Dilip Ghosh as the West Bengal BJP president, an organisational change was required. The party was witnessing a large number of leaders, MPs and workers switching to the ruling TMC putting the party leadership on the backfoot.
To hold the fort in West Bengal amid TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee’s rising popularity, BJP national president JP Nadda has given the responsibility to strengthen the party across the state to six MPs and 10 MLAs.
The most significant organisational change in the list is the induction of two new MLAs as general secretary and six new MLAs as secretary. This is probably the first time that the state BJP has handed over a massive responsibility to new faces.
One of the two new MLAs to become general secretary is Dipak Barman, who is the Falakata MLA from Alipurduar. Burman was a surprise pick as he was not holding any party position before, and now the party has decided to portray him as the Rajbanshi face of North Bengal.
Ace fashion designer and Asansol South MLA, Agnimitra Paul was also promoted as general secretary. She was the president of Mahila Morcha. The party appointed Tanuja Chakraborty as the new Mahila Morcha president.
The six new MLAs given the post of secretary are: Siliguri MLA Shankar Ghosh, Old Malda MLA Gopal Saha, Murshidabad MLA Gauri Shankar Ghosh, Pursura (Hooghly district) MLA Biman Ghosh, West Durgapur MLA Lakshman Chandra Ghorui, and Moyna (East Midnapore) MLA Ashoke Bhimchandra Dinda.
Nadda has also chosen six MPs, including Arjun Singh, Jagannath Sarkar, Khagen Murmu, Saumitra Khan, Locket Chatterjee and Jyotirmoy Singh Mahato for the responsibility of strengthening the party cadre in Bengal.
Another noticeable change is MP Saumitra Khan’s elevation from yuva president to state vice-president. The party has appointed Dr Indranil Khan as the new yuva morcha president.
Looking at the Jangalmahal/scheduled tribe vote share (which went to the TMC in the assembly elections), the BJP gave Jewel Murmu (Habibpur MLA in Nadia district) to lead the ST morcha as president. Earlier, MP Khagen Murmu was the ST morcha president, but he was elevated to the post of vice-president.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, all seats under Jangalmahal, including Purulia, Midnapore, Bishnupur in Bankura and Jhargram, went to the BJP. But in the last assembly election, however, the tribal/matua vote share went to the TMC forcing the BJP to go in for an organisational change by keeping prominent MPs and MLAs from the ST and Matua community (Jagannath Sarkar is a vice-president now) in the new state committee list.
Surprisingly, BJP old-timer Sayantan Basu was dropped from the post of general secretary while his colleague Anindya Banerjee, popularly known as Raju Banerjee, was promoted to vice-president.
Advocate Priyanka Tibrewal, who contested against Mamata from Bhabanipur, was also made a secretary.
Pratap Banerjee, Jayprakash Majumdar, Biswapriya Roy Chowdhury and Ritesh Tiwari were dropped from the post of vice-president.
A senior party leader said, “The organisational change was necessary as the party was on the backfoot due to the large number of workers/party leaders/MLAs/MPs switching camps. We are aware about the challenges in Bengal, considering Mamata Banerjee’s politics and the recent setbacks in the assembly and civic polls. Therefore, Nadda ji has given the steer to 10 MLAs and six MPs to hold the ship in Bengal. After a poor show in tribal areas and in Matua-dominated areas, the party has strategically projected Dipak Barman and Jagannath Sarkar to strengthen the party’s base among them.”
The leader added, “In January, our party president JP Nadda will be in Kolkata to personally interact with the new committee members and to brief them about the road ahead in Bengal.”
Sukanta Majumdar is in New Delhi to attend the party’s meeting on December 23, which will be chaired by Nadda.
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